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Assuming this is because of Brexit, it was the UK that decided that, so you should thank them. The rule that the domain is EU/EEA-only already existed and was clear.

Well, I'm a citizen of the UK and I voted in the referendum to stay in the EU.

The EU could have agreed to change its TLD ownershipo rules rules (which they actually have done recently, so the rules are not set in stone) to introduce a grandfathering-in provision if they had wanted to. Close it for new registrations but allow existing resistratnts to continue to renew.

But it seems they chose to be dicks about it, perhaps to spite the UK I guess. Maybe to send a warning to other truculent EU countries. I can't say I understand their reasoning. Perhaps just petty bureaucracy at work.

But now that the precedent is set, other EU citizens should be very wary of using .eu domains. There's no guarantee that your country will remain in the EU forever either.

Doing that for spite is a very short-sighted thing indeed.

I think Hanlon's razor offers a better explanation

it was spite: the EU Commission explicitly said it wanted those domains cancelled and that the rules would not be changed

Funny enough Hanlon's razor still applies because in this case the stupidity lies in the counterproductive use of malice.

Why counterproductive? It has become remarkably quiet on the front of countries making plans to leave the EU.

Insightful remark, nevertheless.

There was spite involved, and for good reason.

> But it seems they chose to be dicks about it, perhaps to spite the UK I guess. Maybe to send a warning to other truculent EU countries.

Well, of course the EU chose to be dicks about it - the various UK governments did all their best to ensure an as-chaotic-as-possible Brexit, constantly derailing discussions, even risking setting the Northern Ireland civil war alight again and demand that the EU concede to prevent that.

It was dumb enough that Brexit happened in the first place (some say, the vote was close enough that Russian propaganda made the key difference), but the way that Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and now Sunak have handled Brexit made an already bad situation even worse. Had they shown even the slightest bit of respect and solution-oriented thinking towards the EU, the EU negotiators would have been far more interested in solutions that don't mess up stuff too much.

Yes but… Some current EU states have not exactly covered themselves in glory whilst their elected governments have rode roughshod over some of the EU’s most fundamental principles, and what sanctions have their citizens faced?

I’m not proud of the UK when it comes to Brexit, but I can’t take the whole ‘follow the rules of the club / stay in it to enjoy the benefits’ seriously anymore.

I assume you're referring to pre-Tusk Poland and Hungary? If yes, I agree with you... the key problem is that the EU has been founded on the implicit assumption that its members would follow the law and if they wouldn't they would at least follow the courts. That held up for a long time, and then populism took over, but by the time that was realized there were too many countries in the EU to ever get consensus to truly fix this issue.

American politics suffer from the same issue IMHO, their system can't cope with the Republicans being willfully obstructionist for decades now.

Indeed - and so this explains why I roll my eyes at silly comments along the lines as 'they [Brits] voted for it, let them stand in a queue at the airport or lose their .eu domains'.

It would seem to be more equitable to me a least (someone who voted remain and lives in the EU) if the ballot had presented the options of "Remain" or "Remain and ignore all of the rules". But I don't think that would be particularly popular with the rest of the EU populace, and yet, effectively, it's what's happening.

> Indeed - and so this explains why I roll my eyes at silly comments along the lines as 'they [Brits] voted for it, let them stand in a queue at the airport or lose their .eu domains'.

For me, the most sad thing to see was that despite all of these issues and the utterly insane blunders of the last years that weren't even related to Brexit or Covid, the Tories are still in charge...

I have a slightly controversial opinion on this in that I apportion quite a lot of the blame onto Labour at the time too - pre Johnson (i.e. the Corbyn years) what effective opposition was there? Why did they then perform so utterly poorly in the election? It’s one thing to be popular with a vocal segment of enthusiasts, but unfortunately they only count votes.

And yes, first past the post and all that, but there was still an incredibly clear swing on the popular vote (-8%) away from them.

Well we haven't actually had an election since 2019

I don't think it's fair to expect the EU to bend over backwards to accommodate the defectors after how they behaved. The UK knew what would happen and they choose that path anyway throwing a large number of UK citizens under the bus. It's unfortunate that they made that choice, but it's not the fault of the EU and it's not the EU's responsibility.

It also seems a bit unfair to suggest that .eu domains aren't dependable as if the same thing could happen without warning to any member country considering that the precedent established is that it would only happen to countries that insist on it happening to them.

>The UK knew what would happen and they choose that path anyway throwing a large number of UK citizens under the bus.

The politicians definitely all know it wouid be a disaster - Gove and Johnson's faces on the day of the result look like they're at a funeral.

The public, however, insisted that "we knew what we was voting for", verbally abusing anyone who asked them what that actually was, and now are claiming that "this isn't what we voted for". Well, it was, and you were told so. Let me play the world's smallest violin in sympathy.

> The public

51.8% of the voting public

In addition: after the referendum, the EU offered all kinds of options to make it a soft Brexit, but those same politicians drew unnecessarily strong red lines (and are still doing so regarding Northern Ireland) in order to appease a tiny extremist minority in their party. There's only so much the EU can do. Decisions have consequences, and I can't blame the EU for being a bit too strict now and then in response to that kind of game-playing and plain incompetence.

> Well, I'm a citizen of the UK and I voted in the referendum to stay in the EU.

Welcome to democracy.

As an EU citizen, I am against allowing leaving countries to keep their priviledges. Either in or out. But this kind of whining from the no-brexit fraction is really pathetic.

OPs citizenship was removed from him without his approval, based on the minority votes of U.K. and foreigners living in the U.K., it is a travesty.

That is a travesty, but still the UK's fault for allowing it to happen in the first place not the EU's

See also the periodic complaints about UK tourists being discriminated against in airports for having the slower non-EU line.

Only idiots would compain about passport control queues. It's nothing like the .eu domain issue at all. A costless administrative accomodation could easily have been made.

Sadly the majority of people who didn’t want this are also affected.

I had no problem with a bunch of daily mail readers giving up their freedoms it’s when they took the freedoms of me and my children away that I got annoyed.

Imagine if Texas seceded from the USA and suddenly anyone born in Texas had their American citizenship revoked

If you can't be arsed to vote it's because you don't care about the outcome.

The OP may have voted and been in the minority.

Or because you were born after 1998

If this happened because you're in the UK, it's not the EU's fault we left and you're blaming the wrong people.

Let's not get into Brexit mud-slinging. I simply contend that EU could have made a more reasonable accomodation for existing UK holders of .eu domains.

I think it's perfectly reasonable not to offer the UK special treatment over other nations. It would certainly have been more generous to allow UK registrants to retain their domains, but it doesn't seem to me more reasonable. The EU's responsibility is to its members, and they negotiated the withdrawal agreement accordingly.

The UK could, of course, have made access to the .eu TLD a higher priority when negotiating the withdrawal agreement. I expect we could have secured it. I don't see any reason to believe that the EU witheld it unreasonably.

I don't think it's mud-slinging to point out that the EU didn't kick us out!

Could have, but shouldn't.

The RU did not have to remove the citizenship from millions of people who were born EU citizens and had no say in the minority decision to leave the EU

I'm sure Russia did no such thing!

It doesn't have to withold citizenship from anyone. In some ways it's more reasonable that I lost my EU citizenship through a democratic process in my country than that, say, a Turkish person doesn't have EU citizenship because the process of joining has taken so long.

I'd like to still be an EU citizen but I don't see how it's the EU's fault that I'm not.

I guess it’s a weird thought experiment, but what if scotland left the UK, should they still have rights to use .uk tld’s? Maybe yes for historical reasons but it is a twee bit odd to have what is essentially a foreign entity representing themselves with your name.

Do you UK? Or have you always resided outside the EU?

I would argue for a "grandfathering in" provision. Both in the Brexit case and your hypothetical Scexit.

So, if Scotland became independent, the remaining UK might close the .uk ccTLD for new Scottish registrations but existing domain holders should have the right to retain their registrations indefinitely.

I think it's ethically wrong to forcible take away someone's domain name without exceptionally good reason (such as abusive use of domain or whatever).

(Yes, I am a UK citizen. By "the .eu thing" I was referring to the situation as described in the article.)

First, nobody owns a domain; it is assigned to a registrant, by the registry, via the registrar. No domain "owner" has ownership rights; you have the right to use the domain subject to the rules of the registry. If the rules of the registry require the registrant to be a citizen or body of the EU and the registrant no longer meets that requirement, the registrant loses the right to use the domain.

Your proposed solution of grandfathering existing registrations would cause confusion or uncertainty for end users (site visitors) who could not ascertain with confidence that the organisation with which they were dealing was actually in the EU, or registered to an EU citizen or body.

Your assertion that the EU enforced the established rules because they were "being dicks" to the UK is similar to the anti-EU tropes spouted by the anti-EU press in the UK, eg the EU is punishing Brits by making them use non-EU passport lanes, restricting their visits to 90 days, etc. Your fellow citizens voted (unfortunately) to leave the organisation and these are the consequences of non-membership. If you decide to leave your golf club, you don't get to continue using the golf course and clubhouse.

> Your proposed solution of grandfathering existing registrations would cause confusion or uncertainty for end users (site visitors) who could not ascertain with confidence that the organisation with which they were dealing was actually in the EU, or registered to an EU citizen or body.

I don't buy that argument. A UK citizen can still register .eu TLD through a company they control in the EU, if they have the resources to do so. The EU's decision to rescind registrations for former EU citizens only really affects non-wealthy private citizens. The wealthy, and large companies, can get around the rule.

Secondly, there is precendent for this kind of thing. When Soviet Union broke up, .su domains registrants were allowed to keep their registrations despite now being Ukrainian or Estonian or whatever citizens. Similarly when Yugoslavia broke up, .yu registrants could keep theirs, they weren't forced to surrender.

Edit: And a union of nation states is not like a golf club. You cannot reduce the argument by analogy to a sports club membership. A political union is much more complex than that.

Citizenship, free movement etc., or course those could not continue after Brexit. Those are politically fundamental.

But when it comes to internet's DNS system, people have lives and businesses that are contingent on maintining exclusive control of a given set of characters on a DNS server. Basic security of the internet is built around the expectation of being able to maintain indefinite control of a domain.

Sure, the EU rules said domain owners must reside in EU/EEA but I expect that the possibility of a country leaving EU was not considered when that rule was written (certainly, I did not consider it at the time I registered the domain). It would be prudent and reasonable to revisit those rules in light of such a significant and unexpexted event as Brexit and the significant problems it would cause to affected existing .eu domain registrants. But no, this was simply impossible -- rules are rules! /s

Edit 2: Indeed, the EU did rewrite the rules. Because EU citizens remaining residing in the UK would also lose their registrations, the EU rewrote to rules to allow citizenship as well as residence to be a qualification for domain registration. So the argument that the rules were fixed in stone and known by everyone, and so should not be changed, does not hold water either. The EU did change the rules to account for Brexit. But chose to do harm to existing domain registrants from the UK anyway for no apparent benefit to anyone.

If I look at the differences between what cite as precedent and the UK/EU situation it's that the EU continues functioning whereas Yugoslavia and Soviet Union did not.

Maybe more impetuous to protect EU institutions from impersonation? Not sure.

> I don't buy that argument. A UK citizen can still register .eu TLD through a company they control in the EU, if they have the resources to do so. The EU's decision to rescind registrations for former EU citizens only really affects non-wealthy private citizens. The wealthy, and large companies, can get around the rule.

Regrettably, this is true of most rules.

> But when it comes to internet's DNS system, people have lives and businesses that are contingent on maintining exclusive control of a given set of characters on a DNS server.

People had lives and businesses that were contingent on a great many things that were lost to Brexit.

It seems like maybe you think of the TLD problem as a special case because it affected you so directly and significantly and is within your area of expertise. (I don't mean this as a criticism, it's completely normal and I've no doubt I would do the same.) But really I don't think it's particularly different from all of the other administrative problems that Brexit created.

> But when it comes to internet's DNS system, people have lives and businesses

Seriously?

People had lives and businesses reliant on the UK being a member of the EU — there were hundreds of stories of people who were spending lots of time in the EU caring for relatives, or running their business, but not enough time to claim residence in the EU.

That all got thrown under the bus by the Tories, the domain names is a minor detail in comparison.

(Note the .yu domain was removed in 2010 after a 3 year transition period, but for some reason .su remains.)

At least .yu was completely terminated. Wheras the confiscated .eu domains are now being re-listed for anyone to register! Anyone can now claim my old email address and I can do nothing to stop it. This is what bugs me the most about the whole thing.

.uk is not actually a ccTLD - the country code is really gb. .gb is delegated, but unused.

Oh wow, really? That's insane and such an absurd oversight.

Given that the government literally uses gov.uk and ac.uk for academic institutions.

EDIT: seems one of us is wrong;

> .uk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. It was first registered in July 1985, seven months after the original generic top-level domains such as .com and the first country code after .us.

It's in a weird state where it was manually delegated before the ISO-based ones were created. So it's not actually a ccTLD, but is treated as one.

This is not correct. `.uk` is a ccTLD, and it isn't the ISO 3166 code for the UK, which is `gb`.

These are two different systems with substantial overlap.

And in FIPS "GB" is Gabon, leading to all sorts of fun.

> but I still contend that the EU could have made an accomodation for existing registrants to hold onto their domains

Sure, and I completely understand your position. But... well many other UK citizen had at least some inconvenience resulting from the Brexit. Should the EU have gone out of their way to accommodate everyone from the country that essentially said "I don't care about the EU anymore"?

If you could leave the EU, keep all the benefits of being in the EU and get all the benefits of not being in the EU all at the same time, then there would be no EU. So yeah... you can't have it all :-).

Good reminder that personal domains should not be chosen as `.eu` though.