Annexes to COM(2015)680 - Implementation, functioning and effectiveness of the .eu Top-Level Domain - Main contents
Please note
This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2015)680 - Implementation, functioning and effectiveness of the .eu Top-Level Domain. |
|---|---|
| document | COM(2015)680  |
| date | December 18, 2015 |
Since 2013, EURid has sought to improve the quality of .eu Whois data and encouraged the cooperative compliance of registrars with their contractual obligations. To that end the Registry launched the Whois Quality Plan project to check the Whois database and fix any inaccuracies.
5.7.2013 Audit and Technical Verification of the Registry
Under its Service Concession Contract with EURid, the Commission may arrange for an “audit to be carried out, either by an outside body of its choice, or by the Commission departments themselves. The object of such an audit shall be to verify the Contractor’s compliance with the contract”.
An audit was carried out by the Commission between Q3 and Q4 2013. Based on the results of the audit and technical verification, Commission audit services were of the opinion that the Registry manager – EURid Asbl/vzw – was in compliance with the Service Concession Contract for the organisation, administration and management of the .eu TLD.
At the same time, the auditors identified a series of areas for improvement, including:
establishing an effective conflict of interest internal policy (which EURid had in place, but was further refined and tightened up);
evaluating the need for having subsidiaries in three other Member States (this was an obligation required under the original Service Concession Contract. EURid had already committed to assess the value of subsidiaries when responding to the 2013 call for expression of interest for the selection of the .eu TLD Registry);
introducing a formal procurement policy (since the audit EURid has made its internal procedure official and mandatory for expenses above a specific threshold);
carrying out regular reviews of the reserve-building process (EURid is doing this on a yearly basis in close cooperation with the Commission services).
5.8.Legal proceedings and disputes concerning domain names
5.8.1.Cases before the General Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union
General Court: none
Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU): one preliminary ruling.
In 2011 the Brussels Court of Appeal referred the lensworld.eu case (Pie Optiek vs. Bureau Gevers) to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling.
The CJEU judgment was rendered on 19 July 2012. The Court of Appeal rendered its final decision on 3 October 2013, rejecting Pie Optiek’s claim against EURid as inadmissible. The court concluded that Gevers had made a mistake and ordered it to pay €70.000 damages to Pie Optiek, mostly court-related expenses.
No appeal was filed; the judgment of the Brussels Court of Appeal has become definitive.
5.8.2.Alternative Dispute Resolution procedure
Any disputes between .eu domain name holders or claims against .eu Registry decisions,can be submitted to the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) provider, which is the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC).
The ADR procedure applies without prejudice to any court proceeding. Complaints can be submitted online in any official EU language. 12
ADR against EURid concerning single character domain names
The ADR proceeding 06814 was initiated against EURid in respect of the domain names e.eu, f.eu, y.eu. According to the applicable rules, a .eu domain name should contain at least two characters.
The Complainant contested EURid’s rejection of the requests for registration.
In his decision of 18 November 2014, the ADR panelist rejected the complaint. The Complainant did not appeal and the case has been closed.
Reducing the ADR fee (agreement between Czech Arbitration Court and EURid)
On 27 June 2012, CAC and EURid announced a special fee reduction to make the .eu ADR process even more accessible.
The €1,300 fee for a basic proceeding, i.e. to dispute one to five domain names before a single-member panel, was cut by €700 in a new fee structure valid for a period of six months starting from 1 July 2012. The ADR fees were cut further in 2014, with the total reduction per filing of an ADR complaint rising to €1,000 as of 1 January 2015. The €1,000 discount is granted per each filed complaint irrespective of the number of domain names in dispute and the type of panel requested.
5.8.3.Other court proceedings
In the reporting period EURid was a party in the following cases:
Depmarc
Depmarc challenged EURid's rejection of its Sunrise 13 applications for 36 domain names based on Dutch trade names. The Claimant asked the Court to order EURid to transfer the domain names to Depmarc. The case was settled by means of a settlement agreement and on 14 November 2013 the Court declared it closed.
Of the 36 domain names, 30 for which there were no next applications accepted in the Sunrise queue, were released for general registration on 11 March 2014. The other 6 domain names for which the next applications in the Sunrise queue were accepted have been activated in the name of the applicant.
Dotace
The Sunrise application by the Czech company Dotace was rejected by the validator (and EURid) for lack of sufficient proof of a prior right to “Dotace”. The CAC confirmed EURid's rejection of the dotace.eu domain name in its decision (Case 04281). The domain name applicant subsequently appealed before the Brussels Court of First Instance.
When the Claimant refused to sign a settlement agreement, EURid filed a claim for vexatious court proceedings in order to be able to re-activate the proceedings and get a final outcome.
In its judgment of 24 October 2014, the Court of First Instance ruled entirely in favour of EURid.
6. EMAS registration and CO2 compensation
On 23 May 2012, EURid became the first EMAS-certified 14 registry in Europe (registration number BE-VL-000016). The final assessment of the 9 objectives and 41 actions of the 2012-2014 EMAS programme showed that 95% of the objectives had been achieved, including the main one: fully compensating for EURid's CO2 emissions. In Q1 2015, following annual audits, EURid started the process of renewing its EMAS registration and extending it to its Pisa branch.
Since 2013, EURid has validated its CO2 emissions and purchased certified CO2 credits to compensate them.
7. Conclusions
The .eu TLD model has been implemented successfully and is operating effectively.
Over the past two years, the .eu TLD has strengthened its position as one of the biggest and most popular TLDs in Europe and the world. It remains successful despite the continued, albeit slower, growth of the 28 Member States ccTLDs and the increased availability of gTLDs, with which the Registry has been able to cope thanks to the quality label associated with the .eu TLD.
Five years after EURid’s application for the .eu string in Greek and Cyrillic, ICANN has not approved the Greek .ευ on the grounds that it is confusingly similar to other strings in upper case. The Commission has repeatedly urged ICANN to complete this process as soon as possible. It has stressed that the rules for a ‘permanent’ IDN application procedure should be set out so as to avoid undue delay. This is one of the public policy issues that the Commission will continue to raise in the Governmental Advisory Committee, which provides public policy advice to ICANN, as well as in other ICANN constituent bodies.
The financial situation of the Registry remained stable during the reporting period.
The Commission monitors the use of the ADR system provided by the CAC, which allows for the protection of registrants' rights in all EU languages. Following recommendations by auditors, EURid has reduced fees to improve access to the system for individuals and SMEs who have reasons to believe that their .eu names have been improperly registered by third parties.
The DNS environment has recently undergone one of the its biggest changes of the past two decades. Hundreds of new gTLDs have been launched in the market sometimes creating confusion among registrants and registrars. At the same time, the advent of social media has led to a dropping-off of interest in domain names, as younger Internet end users and dynamic new companies prefer to communicate their online presence via the faster social media avenues.
The .eu TLD and its Registry have shown that they are able to cope very well with the challenges to date, although the environment is expected to be even more competitive in the future. The Commission has a regular and constructive dialogue with the Registry to investigate and identify possible ways of dealing with the new DNS landscape while keeping the .eu space secure, reliable and worthwhile for current and future stakeholders.
ANNEXES
Annex 1: World's top TLDs as of 31 March 2015
Source: EURid’s Quarterly Progress Report, Q1 2015
ANNEX 2: .eu registrations by quarter
ANNEX 3: ADR complaints filed by year
| Complaints filed in 2013 | Complaints filed in 2014 | |
| January | 6 | 5 |
| February | 5 | 5 |
| March | 4 | 4 |
| April | 4 | 1 |
| May | 2 | 6 |
| June | 7 | 5 |
| July | 6 | 4 |
| August | 2 | 7 |
| September | 3 | 7 |
| October | 6 | 7 |
| November | 4 | 7 |
| December | 3 | 4 |
| TOTAL | 52 | 62 |
ADR cases terminated in 2013: 57 (of which 47 complaints accepted)
| 2013 | Complaint Rejected | Complaint Accepted | Complaint defective | Settlement | TOTAL |
| January | 6 | 6 | |||
| February | 3 | 3 | |||
| March | 4 | 1 | 5 | ||
| April | 1 | 1 | |||
| May | 7 | 7 | |||
| June | 2 | 6 | 8 | ||
| July | 5 | 2 | 7 | ||
| August | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 | |
| September | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| October | 6 | 1 | 7 | ||
| November | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||
| December | 3 | 3 | |||
| TOTAL | 3 | 47 | 4 | 3 | 57 |
ADR cases terminated in 2014: 57 (of which 43 complaints accepted)
| 2014 | Complaint Rejected | Complaint Accepted | Complaint defective | Settlement | TOTAL |
| January | 6 | 1 | 7 | ||
| February | 1 | 1 | |||
| March | 1 | 4 | 5 | ||
| April | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| May | 7 | 7 | |||
| June | 1 | 1 | |||
| July | 4 | 1 | 5 | ||
| August | 5 | 2 | 7 | ||
| September | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||
| October | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 | |
| November | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 | |
| December | 8 | 1 | 9 | ||
| TOTAL | 5 | 43 | 8 | 1 | 57 |
ANNEX 4: Total number of .eu domain names by country of registrant
Source: EURid’s Quarterly Progress Report, Q1 2015
ANNEX 5: .eu domains per 1,000 inhabitants
Source: EURid’s Quarterly Progress Report, Q1 2015
ANNEX 6: IDN registrations under .eu against total .eu portfolio
Source: EURid’s Quarterly Progress Report, Q1 2015
(1) .tk is excluded due to special framework and selling model.
(2) (OJ L 113, 30.4.202, p.1)
(3) Regulation (EC) No 1137/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 October 2008 adapting a number of instruments subject to the procedure laid down in Article 251 of the Treaty to Council Decision 1999/468/EC with regard to the regulatory procedure with scrutiny — Adaptation to the regulatory procedure with scrutiny — Part One (OJ L 311, 21.11.2008, p. 1).
(4) (OJ L 162, 30.4.2004, p.40)
(5) Commission Regulation (EC) No 1654/2005 of 10 October 2005 (OJ L 266, 11.10.2005, p. 35), Commission Regulation (EC) No 1255/2007 of 25 October 2007 (OJ L 282 26.10.2007, p. 16), Commission Regulation (EC) No 560/2009 of 26 June (OJ L 166, 27.6.2009, p. 3), Commission Regulation (EU) No 516/2015 of 26 March 2015 (OJ L 82, 27.03.2015, p.14).
(6) EURid stands for European Registry of Internet Domain Names, a non-profit company, which had managed the .eu TLD under contract to the European Commission
(7) European Commission Implementing Decision of 11 April 2014 on the designation of the .eu Top-Level Domain Registry (OJ L109/41, 12.4.2014).
(8) For more information on the Fast Track Process, see: http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/ .
(9) Article 3(4) of Regulation (EC) No 733/2002, and recitals 2, 3, 4 and Article 4 of Regulation (EC) 874/2004.
(10) The system that permits finding who is responsible for a domain name.
(11) These figures include the funds set aside for the Co-funded marketing Programme for the registrars.
(12) For ADR statistics, see Annex 3.
(13) cybersquatting top-level domain Sunrise Period PricewaterhouseCoopers EURid The sunrise period of domain registration is a special period during which trademark holders may preregister names that are the same or similar to their trademarks in order to avoid . This occurs prior to the general launch of the (TLD). In order to register, the group or individual must be able to prove their prior right to the name. The for .eu was broken into two phases. The first phase, which began on 7 December 2005, was to facilitate applications by registrants with prior rights based on trademarks and geographic names. The second phase began on 7 February 2006 and covered company, trade and personal names. In the case of all Sunrise applications, the application needed to be accompanied by documents proving the claim to ownership of a certain right. The decision was then made by Belgium, which had been chosen as the validation agent by . On 7 February 2006, the registry was opened for company, trade and personal names. In the first 15 minutes, there were 27.949 total applications, and after one hour, 71.235.
(14) The EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is a management tool for companies and other organisations to evaluate report and improve their environmental performance.