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Domain names and Brexit: all of a sudden nothing happened

As you probably will know, the United Kingdom left the European Union on January 31st 2020. What are the consequences of the Brexit for .domain name registrations? We were kept in the dark for quite a while but so was the .eu registry itself.

EURid (.eu-registry) only received the final info of the European Commission last Friday (January 31st 2020), only hours before the actual Brexit.

At the moment the status is as follows: The UK and the EU have entered a so called ‘transition period’. During this transition period UK citizens and residents can still register domain names under the .eu domain. However this will change once a final agreement is reached. From then on UK citizens and residents will probably no longer be able to hold domain names under .eu. So also existing owners of a .eu domain name with an address in Britain could loose their domain name at that time. But if the communication remains as last minute as it was until now, we’ll have to wait until the end of 2020 before we receive the correct information. Unless, obviously, the negotiation dead-line is extended.

Also the Italian registry came with a last-minute statement about Brexit. The local presence restrictions of .it are very similar to those of .eu. They indicate that during the transitional period everything will remain the same as it was before. But what will happen next will depend on the eventual agreement reached between the UK and the EU.

The .hr registry (Croatia) made no official statement about the Brexit, but their rules are slightly different. If you’re not from Croatia, then you need to have a valid EU VAT-number. So as long as British VAT-numbers can be validated via the European VAT Information Exchange System, British companies will remain eligible to hold a .hr domain name.

We’ll keep you posted about the consequences of Brexit for domain name registrations once more info is available.

February 2020
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