The top-level .eu domain is considered to be Europe’s unique internet identity, the introduction of which had a dual aim: increasing the visibility of the European Union on the worldwide web, and promoting the development of commerce in the internal market. The European Parliament decided about the implementation of the .eu domain already in April 2002.
Preliminary sale of the .eu label was done in two phases. First companies in possession of trademarks and domains related to geographical names could register on 7 December 2005. Then registration continued with other commercial units, companies (registered products) and proper names on 7 February 2006. Registry operators received 27 949 requests in the first fifteen minutes of sales in the second phase.

At 11 o’clock Central European Time on 7 April 2006, any company could request a .eu label provided that they had their official company seat in Europe, and access to top-level domains was opened to private persons residing in Europe as well. Authorised registrars received  a total of 700 000 requests for domain names in barely four hours.
Approximately four million .eu registrations have been reached by the official tenth anniversary, and thus EU’s domain name is the 11th most frequent among all the top-level domain names. The largest number of registrations (1 million) was received from Germany, they are followed by the Dutch (497 thousand), and the last place on the imaginary winner’s stand goes to France (343 thousand). Interesting enough that the United Kingdom is only the fifth with 307 thousand registrations, Poland with 308 thousand EU domain names precedes the UK. Roughly 44 thousand EU domains were registered from Hungary.