EU Commission withdraws British EU domains in connection with Brexit

The European commission announced in January 2019, that they will revoke British EU domains in conjunction with Brexit.

It’s about 300 000 British EU domains and it will affect everything from large established companies to individuals. The domains will be revoked regardless of how a possible exit agreement between the UK and the EU is designed.

The affected domains will disappear from the web within 48 hours of the readmission. The same applies to email and other services related to the relevant domains, such as certificates.

So, in theory this can become reality after March 29, 2019.

Already in March 2018, the EU Commission flagged on interested parties that there was a risk of withdrawing EU domains. Aftrer that, the number of UK EU domains dropped by 100,000 registrations.

The changes will, of course, have a major impact financially, especially on those websites that have had a good hit rate in search engines with their current domain names.

Many companies will therefore have to restart from scratch.

Some domain name service providers are offering potential solutions to address this, but the effectiveness and legality of those arrangements may one day be tested.

At the time of writing, however, it should be possible, for a company or individuals within the EU, to change legal owners to the domain names.