The European Union's .eu internet domain is marking 20 years online, with more than 3.8 million active registrations.
The domain — used at the end of website and email addresses — is available to European companies, organisations and citizens and is intended to give them a European online identity, the European Commission stated on Wednesday.
The .eu domain is the fourth most-used top-level domain in Europe and the ninth worldwide, it added.
Registrations have been growing by more than 2% each year and about 80% of names are renewed.
European retailers have used .eu as a single web address across the EU’s single market.
Security and anniversary event
Machine learning tools are now used behind the scenes to prevent abuse, check data quality and support reliability and security, the Commission said.
The .eu domain has been continuously online for 20 years with no downtime, it added.
The anniversary will be marked on 26 and 27 May at a conference titled “European Voices for the Future of the Internet — Celebrating 20 Years of .eu and the Beginning of a New Internet Governance Decade.”
Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, is due to give a keynote speech at the event.
