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France / Europe

European domain names, and the local presence condition nobody reads

Some extensions are only open to holders with a link to the territory, and a registry can take the name back when the link is not there. The more common accident is simpler: the name is registered to someone who is not your company.

China → France

A domain name looks like the least serious purchase in a European launch. It is bought in a minute, by whoever happens to be setting up the site, and nobody reads the eligibility rules of the registry because the shopping page does not show them. Then it becomes the address on every carton, every invoice, every advertisement and every search result — and the question of who exactly holds it stops being administrative.

Which extensions require a link with the territory

Several European extensions are not open to anyone. The Union-wide extension and a number of national ones restrict holders to those with a connection to the territory — a registered office, an establishment, or in some cases simply the residence of a natural person within the Union. The registry may verify at registration, or later, or only when someone complains, and a holder who does not meet the condition can see the name suspended, withdrawn or refused at renewal. Each registry writes its own rules and runs its own checks, so the only reliable source is the registry's eligibility page for the extension you want, read before you buy.

  • A holder address inside the territory. The strictest form: the name in the holder field must be an entity or a person established there, and a foreign address is simply rejected or, worse, accepted and challenged later.
  • A local administrative or technical contact. The holder may be foreign, but the registry wants someone on the territory to write to. Harmless until that someone leaves the company that employed them.
  • A trustee arrangement offered by an agent. The agent appears as holder of record and holds the name for you. It works, and it is exactly the situation you must document: without a written agreement saying you are the beneficiary and that the name is handed over on request, you are relying on goodwill.
  • No condition at all. Some European registries accept any holder anywhere, which is comfortable and tells you nothing about the others. The absence of a condition on one extension is not a rule about the next one.

The domain registered in somebody else's name

This is the real risk, and it happens quietly. The web agency registers the name while building the site. The distributor registers the national version because it has a local address and you do not. The sales employee hired in Europe registers it on a personal card because it was faster. In each case the holder field carries their name, the registrar account sits under their login, and the renewal notices go to their mailbox. Nothing is wrong while the relationship is good, which is why nobody checks — and the day the relationship ends, you discover that transferring a name requires the authorisation of the person who holds it.

What that blocks is concrete. No change of holder, so no transfer to your own account. No change of the technical records, so no migration to a new site and no new certificate. No control of the mail routing, which means your European mailboxes depend on somebody's cooperation. A distributor in a termination discussion will put the name on the table, and it is a strong card because your printed packaging points at it. Dispute procedures exist, but they are slow, they cost more than the name ever did, and they generally work only where you can show a prior right such as a registered trademark in that territory.

One domain with language folders, or separate national domains

This choice is argued as if it were a legal question, and it is not. It is a search and budget decision. A single domain with a folder per language concentrates everything you earn in one place, runs on one technical stack, is certified once, and signals language and country through the markup made for it. Separate national domains give a clearer local signal and an asset you can sell or hand to a local partner, at the price of multiplying everything: registry conditions, renewals, certificates, content to write and keep aligned, and the reputation each one has to build from nothing. For a brand arriving from outside Europe, the single domain almost always wins until a country has its own team and its own catalogue.

There are things the extension does not do. It does not change your obligations: the identification, the consumer information, the data representative and the tax treatment follow where you sell and to whom, not what the address ends in. And it gives you no right over the name itself — a registry allocates an address, it does not grant a trademark. Check the national and Union trademark registers for the word you intend to print before you commit to packaging, because the holder of an earlier mark can reach your domain through a dispute procedure even though the registry handed it to you without a question.

The rule of thumb

  1. The holder is the company, written with its exact legal name as it appears in its own register — not a trading name, not an abbreviation, not a person.
  2. The contact address is a company address: a role mailbox that several people can open, not the mailbox of whoever happens to run the site this year.
  3. The registrar account belongs to the company, with credentials held by more than one trusted person and a recovery route that does not pass through a single phone.
  4. Transfer lock on, automatic renewal on, and the payment card a company card rather than someone's personal one.
  5. An inventory kept outside the site: every name, its registry and registrar, its expiry, its eligibility condition, and who is allowed to act on it. Review it when anyone leaves.
  6. Where an agent must hold the name to satisfy a local condition, a written trustee agreement naming you as beneficiary, with handover on request and a clause that survives the end of the commercial relationship.

Audit the holder field of every name you use in Europe this week, from the public registry record rather than from what a supplier tells you, and do it while everyone is still on good terms — a holder change is a formality between friends and a negotiation between former partners. If a distributor or an employee appears as holder, ask for the transfer as a routine housekeeping step, with the registrar account and the authorisation code, and get the registry record to show your company name before you approve the next print run of packaging.

Questions we get on this.

Our agency registered our domain. How do we get it back?

Ask for a change of holder in writing, as an administrative step, before anything has gone wrong. The registry needs the authorisation of the current holder, which is why the request is trivial while the relationship is good and painful afterwards. Ask for the registrar account and its credentials, the authorisation code where the registry uses one, and confirmation in the registry's own public record — not a screenshot from the agency's dashboard, which proves nothing about who holds the name. If the agency refuses, what you can do depends on what you can prove: the contract and the invoices showing the registration was made on your behalf, and, where you hold an earlier trademark in that territory, the registry's dispute procedure. Every one of those routes costs more than the email you could have sent while things were calm.

Should we register the national domain of every country we might sell in?

Separate defending a name from publishing a site. Defensive registrations of your brand in the markets that matter are cheap compared with a dispute, and you simply park them pointing at your main site. Publishing a real site on each is a different commitment: content to write, translation to maintain, legal pages per country, certificates, renewals, eligibility conditions to keep satisfying, and a reason for each site to be found at all. The sensible sequence is to build the single domain structure you can actually maintain, park the defensive names, and promote one to a real site when a country has its own team, its own catalogue and its own after-sales. A national domain with thin translated content is worse than no national domain.

Does a local presence condition mean we need a company there?

Not necessarily, and this is where reading the registry pays. The conditions differ: some registries want an entity established on the territory, some accept an establishment or a branch, some accept the residence of a natural person anywhere in the Union, some are satisfied with a local administrative contact, and some ask for nothing at all. Because it varies registry by registry, the only answer that holds is the eligibility page of the extension you want, read before you pay. If the only way to satisfy the condition is an agent holding the name as trustee, accept it but paper it: a written agreement naming your company as beneficiary, handover on request, and a clause that outlives the commercial relationship — otherwise you have solved an eligibility problem by creating a dependency one.

Keep reading on this.

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If this raised a question about your own project, tell us where you are — the first conversation usually clarifies more than a proposal.

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