EURid is a not for profit organisation appointed by the European Commission to be the operator of the Internet top level domain .eu. The first initiative, to establish .eu as a European top level domain, was taken in 1999 by the European Council. Subsequently, various preparations were made, mainly by the European Commission, until EURid was appointed in May 2003 as the operator of .eu, with the service contract being signed in October 2004. EURid was founded in April 2003 by the organisations operating the national top level domains for Belgium, Italy and Sweden. Later, the organisations operating the top level domains for the Czech Republic and Slovenia also joined EURid as members.
.eu was put in the root zone of the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) in March 2005 which means that, technically speaking; it has been in existence since then. .eu began accepting applications for domain names from end users on December 7, 2005. At that time, only holders of prior rights to names enjoying some legal protection in a member state could apply for those names as domain names before .eu opened for general registration on a strictly first-comefirst-served basis on April 7, 2006. This period of phased registration (Dec 7, 2005 – Apr 6, 2006) is referred to as the Sunrise period.
.eu domains are restricted to:EU citizen
or EU company or EU organisationEU = 27 member states
