If an internationally oriented company wants to develop foreign markets, it is important to be present with a web address that is easy to understand and to remember for the local customers. The method to register a domain under the country code for each state is expensive and very complex to organize, especially for pan-European and global companies.

This is one reason for the dominance of the .com domains in the international context. In particular American companies use this top level domain to present themselves to a global auditorium and often do not even make use of a web presence under their own .us country code domain. For many European companies, however, this is not an option because the desired .com domain names are not available anymore.

Fortunately, some attractive alternatives to the overcrowded .com name space exist since the introduction of the .biz- and the .info-TLDs. However, with the introduction of an own TLD for Europe, there will be a European counterpart to the .com domain that emphasizes the European identity of the companies. This moves the business location Europe into the focus of attention while catching up a competitive advantage of the American companies at the same time.

The .eu domain will not only play a significant role in Europe but will also attract a lot of attention throughout the world. It undoubtedly has the potential to become the most important new top level domain of the next ten years.

Even on the very first day, the number of registrations exceeded the threshold of one million .eu domains. That has never been the case with any other new top level domain. Shortly before its first brithday, more than 2.5 million domain names have been registered under the European top level domain. Today (as of April 2024), with ca. 3.6 million registrations, .eu is in place among the Top Ten of the TLDs.