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

[Joseph Friedman <josephf@touro.edu>]

They have not been designated by the ISO for the ISO-3166 1.



On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Bret A. Fausett wrote:

> 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
> 
> ----------------------------------------------
> 
> 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.
> 
>