Liikanen wants to put Europe on Internet map
Europe should have its own top level domain name, said European Commissioner for Enterprise and information society, Erkki Liikanen on 12 December, upon the European Commission's adoption of a proposal to create a registry to run the European domain, .eu. The proposal, which has been worked on with the private sector, will see the creation of a legal entity for the register which would list selected companies and institutions and citizens. It would allow them to register their web address as a European one, allowing the Commission at the same time to help in dispute settlement procedures concerning domain names. The register will be established under article 156 of the European Treaty, involving the trans-European networks. The Commission has been in contact with ICANN (the Internet Corporation for assigned names and numbers) so that.eu can become a reality as soon as the registry has been created. Further developments are envisaged at a later stage, developing second level domain names, such as .press.eu .project.eu and possibly union.eu for European Union official addresses. The Commission has urged the European Parliament to act quickly on this proposal.