Brexit Domain Names & Emails

While the UK left the European Union officially on January 31st of 2020 the Brexit transition period wasn’t put into place until December 31st of 2020. What’s Brexit have to do with websites and emails? A lot actually!  Since the United Kingdom is no longer a part of the European Union, businesses or people from the UK are no longer eligible to use .EU domains.  

This means that UK citizens who had domains that were previously under .EU had to change them to .COM, .CO .UK, .NET, or .ORG or else their domains and any emails associated with their .EU domain would no longer work. 

In October of 2020, the EURid (the registry which is responsible for the day-to-day running of the EU domains) sent an email to all UK users with .EU domains explaining the new .EU eligibility rules. 

On December 21st they sent another email update that explained if registrars were not updated or if they didn’t meet the .EU eligibility requirements by December 31st 2020 then the .EU domain names would be suspended on January 1st 2021.  

How to keep EU domain hosting after Brexit 

According to an article from gov.uk, the only way for UK-based businesses and citizens to keep their .EU domains is if they are: 

  • an EU/EEA citizen, independently of where you live 
  • not an EU/EEA citizen but resident in the EU/EEA 
  • an organization, business or undertaking that is established in the EU/EEA 

While Brexit and .EU domains don’t impact too many of our customers it is still very interesting to see how something like Brexit can affect the IT and marketing world!  

QUESTIONS?

Please contact us today if you have any questions, concerns, or if you are interested in learning more about domain names or websites.  Contact Devfuzion Today!