Launch .eu IDN names starts in December

On December 10th, Eurid (.eu registry) will launch .eu IDN domain names. During this launch, there won’t be a sunrise period, meaning that the owners of a registered trademark, which contains special characters, won’t be able to register their domain name sooner than anyone else. All applications will be treated on a first come, first served basis.

Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) are domain names that contain characters such as letters with accents and characters in non-Latin languages such as Greek. For example, with IDN the registration of the domain name www.café.eu becomes possible while you can now only register www.cafe.eu.

The implementation of IDNs under .eu will not only support all characters of all the 23 official EU languages. Also the complete alphabets of all the official EU languages will be supported. This means that characters of these alphabets, which aren’t used in any of the official languages will be possible. This way, Eurid hopes to be prepared for the accession of new countries to the EU.