As we suggested in our previous article about EU domain name price hike, the European domain would see a decrease in popularity because many EU names would drop at the end of May (40 days after April 12 - the date most EU domain names were registered). We were right.
Seems that the EU international domain name really loses popularity. If we compare EURID registry statistics from end of February 2008 with current situation (27 May, 2008) we see that more than 100,000 names has been dropped from the registry. Cyprus, Czech Republic, Sweden and United Kingdom account for more than 120,000 EU domain name drops while Ireland (due to an expensive and inconvenient national domain) has really embraced the communal EU with almost 24,000 new registrations.

Overall 17 from 33 European countries have said “no” to the idea of penultimate European domain and remained loyal to their national registries. Many experts now say that this was a bad idea and taking into consideration that only about 14% of EU names are active, it really looks that .EU is another stagnate region of the cyberworld.

EU Domain registration country EU domains May, 2008 EU domains Feb, 2008 Fluctuations +/-
Aland Island 178 181 -3
Austria 67,087 68,149 -1,062
Belgium 81,631 82,013 -382
Bulgaria 6,789 6,480 309
Cyprus 52,550 90,392 -37,842
Czech Republic 63,708 63,209 499
Denmark 40,934 42,471 -1,537
Estonia 6,633 6,589 44
Finland 13,458 13,471 -13
France 206,904 205,997 907
French Guiana 14 14 0
Germany 853,283 884,910 -31,627
Gibraltar 4,398 4,281 117
Greece 21,691 21,790 -99
Guadeloupe 139 127 12
Hungary 23,026 23,921 -895
Ireland 55,638 32,259 23,379
Italy 142,324 144,797 -2,473
Latvia 6,958 7,509 -551
Lithuania 6,328 6,062 266
Malta 11,225 20,264 -9,039
Martinique 66 0 66
Netherlands 379,904 378,615 1,289
Poland 124,283 119,479 4,804
Portugal 10,464 11,412 -948
Reunion 182 210 -28
Romania 16,179 15,186 993
Slovakia 14,375 13,985 390
Slovenia 5,106 5,014 92
Spain 60,823 63,638 -2,815
Luxembourg 20,109 14,794 5,315
Sweden 68,397 95,872 -27,475
United Kingdom 354,000 378,551 -24,551
Total 2,718,784 2,821,642 -102,858


In this table you can compare the popularity of European domain name EU before and after the annual season of renewing.

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