On July 1st any domain names that were impacted by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, Brexit, were moved to a status of “WITHDRAWN”. This means that not only is the domain no longer “in zone” but it’s also no longer in the original registrar’s control either.
This is yet another step in the process that the European Commission decided on in order for .eu domain names that had been registered to UK based companies and individuals to be removed if they were not updated in order to be compliant with the regulations.
At this stage the impacted domain names will have been offline since January 1st, so it’s unlikely that anything “critical” is impacted. It is possible, however, that companies that were mostly closed due to pandemic restrictions are only noticing that they might still need some of these domain names.
So what can registrants do now?
Assuming that they can now meet the registration criteria in some way, they’ll need to contact EURid directly to start the process. The registrar that the domain was with originally will not be able to help at this juncture.
If EURid are happy with the information provided they’ll re-enable the domain name and let the registrant transfer the domain name to a registrar using a process similar to a normal domain transfer. However if the registrant does NOT transfer the domain name to a registrar by December 31st 2021 the domain will be deleted along with all the other Brexit impacted domains.
The clock is ticking, as from January 1st 2022 all the domains impacted by this will be made available for registration again, though the release will be handled in batches:
On 1 January 2022, as of 00:00:00 CET, all the domain names in the “WITHDRAWN” status, formerly assigned to UK registrants, will be REVOKED and subsequently, become AVAILABLE for general registration. Their release will occur in batches for security reasons.
Full information on the various steps in the Brexit domain process is outlined on the EURid page here.
