The UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020.
After full ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK and the EU entered into a “Transition Period”.
This time-limited period was agreed as part of the Withdrawal Agreement and will last until 31 December 2020 at least. During the transition period, UK residents and citizens will continue to be able to hold and register a .eu domain name.
No one knows for sure what agreements will be made during the Transition Period, however we think it's best to be prepared for the worst!
We previously blogged about this in February last year and subsequently published two continuation posts in May 2019 and August 2019 . Based on what the plans were back then, this is what we think will happen come January 2021.
Should the UK leave the EU with no deal on 1st January 2021 , we think EURid will enforce the following criteria for .eu domains, meaning that if you/your company are not:
- a Union citizen, independently of their place of residence;
- a natural person who is not a Union citizen and who is a resident of a Member State;
- an undertaking that is established in the Union; or
- an organisation that is established in the Union, without prejudice to the application of national law.
you may not be able to keep or register a .eu domain name.
However, there may well be an agreement made. Who knows!?
As soon as we have more information, we'll update our Blog.
Preparing for Brexit
As no one knows for sure how Brexit will play out, we recommend preparing for a no deal Brexit.
If you don't think you'll be eligible for a .eu domain name next year, it's definitely worth registering a new non .eu domain name now and moving your site to that new domain. You then have a fair amount of time for 301 redirects on your .eu domain to work and make sure that changing your domain doesn't hinder your SEO too much.
If you're a client of Toolkit Websites and you have a .eu domain and are not based in the EU, only in the UK, we can register a new domain for you and perform our Domain Name Migration service to move your website to that domain.
