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.
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
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.
I think Hanlon's razor offers a better explanation
Insightful remark, nevertheless.
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.
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.
American politics suffer from the same issue IMHO, their system can't cope with the Republicans being willfully obstructionist for decades now.
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.
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...
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.
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 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.
51.8% of the voting public
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.