Registrations of .eu domain names surged by more than a quarter (28.2%) in Romania in the second quarter of 2018, and 31.6% for the year, the latest Quarterly Report from the .eu registry EURid shows. But when looking at year-on-year growth, Romania was bested by Ireland (42.3%), Malta (41.2%), Iceland (38.9%) and equalled by Bulgaria.
Overall .eu registrations dropped in the quarter, even though there were 171,843 new .eu registrations, which in part can be attributed to the deletion on 21 June of 11,760 domain names that were registered with non-eligible registration data. Total .eu registrations at the end of June stood at 3,790,450, with registrations dropping each month in the quarter. This compares to the 3,824, 289 registrations at the end of the first quarter, but up from the 3,737,331 as of 30 June 2017.
Of these 3,790,450 .eu domain names, there were 38,286 internationalised domain names under .eu and another 1,956 under the Cyrillic version of .eu, .ею, at the end of June.
When it comes to countries from which .eu registrants come, Germany is by far the largest with 994,044 registrations, almost double the Netherlands’ 504,052. This was followed by France (347,205) and the United Kingdom, whose 304,133 registrations are at risk due to non-eligibility if Britain finally does leave the European Union.
The quarter also included a couple of notable announcements from EURid. These included on 27 June, EURid and the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) announced a joint effort to fight cybercrime in the .eu domain name space. Another was a reminder that as previously announced in May of 2016, the Cyrillic domain name(s) with the Latin .eu extension will be phased-out (deleted) following a three-year phase-out period ending on 31 May 2019. From 1 June 2019, only Cyrillic domain names with the Cyrillic .ею extension will remain registered.
