European Commission Opens Call For Experts to Help Govern .EU

The European Commission has opened a call for experts to join the Multistakeholder Advisory Group on the .eu top-level domain.

The .eu domain name is, in some respects, a bit of an oddity. It is operated under a contract to the European Commission and a lot of its overarching principles flow from the European Commission. While that might make it sound like it’d be very bureaucratic, in reality it operates much like any other country code domain name. Sure, it has its quirks and at various times over the years asks from Brussels have caused headaches for those of us in the channel, but it’s also been very successful and has around 3 million DUMs.

So the current call for experts to join the MAG is quite interesting. The MAG is made up of various groups drawn from government, civil society, business and others, so it should benefit from the diverse input and viewpoints of its members.

The role of the MAG is quite broad and includes advising on how to spend the .eu profits that flow back to the EC:

• “to advise the Commission on the implementation of the Regulation (EU) 2019/5171 (the so called .eu Regulation);
• to issue opinions to the Commission on strategic matters relating to the management, organisation and administration of the .eu TLD, including issues relating to cybersecurity, data protection and use of surplus for internet governance priorities;
• to advise the Commission on matters relating to the monitoring and supervision of the Registry, in particular with regard to the audit referred to in point (l) of Article 10 of the Regulation (EU) 2019/517;
• to advise the Commission on best practices as regards policies and measures against abusive registrations of domain names, in particular registrations without rights or legitimate interests and registrations used in bad faith.”

The official call for experts is here.

Note, however, that the deadline is quite early in January (the 7th).

The roles are not paid, but they will reimburse expenses under EC guidelines. You also have to follow their strict guidelines on submitting a CV for consideration. All details are in the call for experts linked to above.

Disclosure: I currently serve on the .EU Registrar Advisory Board.