Internet domain name. ".eu" celebrates its fifth birthday and has become the 9th biggest top-level domain (TLD). Moreover, it has become the 5th most popular country code top-level domain worldwide and ranks in 4th place in Europe. Having a ".eu" domain is especially beneficial to small and medium-sized companies as it raises their profile on European markets by providing them with a pan-European identity on the Internet. Registrations for a ".eu" domain have grown every year since its introduction and now reach almost 3.5 million.

A ".eu" web presence is instantly recognised by potential customers that may otherwise be suspicious of a company with a country domain name they do not recognise. Examples of SMEs taking up a ".eu" domain include:

• Many small local companies in the Italian region of Tuscany.
• A Lithuanian company installing swimming pools.
• A British events marketing company.
• A Dutch children's clothing shop.

".eu" is not only easy to register, but also easy to manage, as it operates in any of the 23 official languages of the EU. It also allows the use of special letters such as "é", "ö", "ç" or "č" as well as non-Latin scripts such as the Cyrillic or the Greek (the so-called internationalised domain names or IDNs) to the left of the ".eu" web-address.

According the latest report with a variety of statistics about the .eu domain of EURid, the largest take-up for ".eu" is in Germany (31% of total ".eu" domains), the Netherlands (13%), the United Kingdom (10%), France (9%) and Poland (6%). More recently, the use of ".eu" has been growing faster in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia.