.EU domains to appear next year?

ICANN will meet tomorrow, where it is expected to agree to laying the ground rules for .eu domains to be distributed and applied on the internet.

The .eu domain name was originally proposed in February 2000, but due to bureaucratic processes with the European Union and ICANN, there had been no solid plans for ajudging plans to implement the .eu domain.

This will change tomorrow when ICANN is likely to agree to EURid - a consortium of Belgian, Italian, and Swedish registrars - as the administrating company .eu domains.

However, even if ICANN votes unanimously to introduce the .eu domain, it is unlikely that the domain will be available to register for another year due to formal processes. For example, the EU has yet to agree the public policy rules for EURid, which is expected to take anytime from 4 months to complete.