Re: [wg-c] Commission Working paper on the creation of .EU

["Bret A. Fausett" <baf@fausett.com>]

Joseph Friedman wrote:
> No .EU should be created.  .XX is reserved for the ISO country code list.

According to the European Union's working paper, they have secured ISO 3166
status for "EU" "for the purposes of the Internet DNS...." See excerpt from
the Working Paper below.

       -- Bret

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2. The ISO 3166 Standard codes

For historical reasons, ICANN's predecessor, IANA, delegated ccTLD
Registries to bodies in countries outside the United States on the basis of
an international standard code representing geographical entities, known as
the ISO 3166 Standard. IANA's general policy for the delegation and
operation of Registries was described in the document known as RFC 1591
which is currently being updated by the ICANN organisation including advice
from the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). Currently, virtually
all the available 243 two letter codes have been assigned.

Although the territorial code "EU" has not yet been fully standardised and
is not included in the primary list of ISO 3166 two letter codes, the code
"EUR" has been standardised and allocated for use representing the Euro
currency, and the code "EU" has been reserved for this purpose as well, and
has accordingly been included in the list of reserved ISO 3166 codes. This
reservation has been extended for the purposes of the international
financial bond market. In response to a request from the European Commission
in May 1999, the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency has:

" Š Decided to extend the scope of the reservation of the code element EU to
cover any application of ISO 3166-1 that needs a coded representation of the
name European Union. The ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency has no objections
against the exceptionally reserved alpha-2 code element EU being used as a
ccTLD identifier. Such use of the code element EU would be in line with
normal practice as regards the implementation of ISO 3166-1 reserved code
elements to extend this reservation for the purposes of the Internet DNS as
well."

3. Delegation of the TLD by ICANN/IANA

In the past, IANA has delegated ccTLD Registries on the basis of the ISO
3166 standard. In addition to virtually all national entities, a number of
distinct territories (usually islands) are included in the 3166 standard and
the corresponding ccTLDs have been delegated. IANA has stated that it was
not in the business of deciding what is a country and has consequently
sought to refer to the ISO 3166 standard in taking its decisions. In view of
the size and economic importance of the European Union and the extensive use
that could be made of a .EU TLD, both for Electronic Commerce and for the
European Institutions, the European Commission will request the ICANN Board
to delegate the .EU TLD on the basis of a decision by the ISO 3166
Maintenance Agency to extend the reservation of the existing EU code for the
purposes of the Internet. The Commission has also announced that it will
promote the creation of the .EU TLD in the context of the eEurope
initiative.