approximately 80%, which is above the industry average. Brexit On 29 March 2018, as a consequence of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, it was announced that "as of the withdrawal date, undertakings and organisations that are established in the United Kingdom but not in the EU, and natural persons who reside in the United Kingdom will no longer be eligible to register .eu domain names or, if they are .eu registrants, to renew .eu domain names registered before the withdrawal date". The commission announced on 27 April 2018 that it would like to open registration to all EU and EEA citizens, including those living outside the EU. The Parliament, the council, and the Commission reached an agreement on this in December 2018, and the corresponding regulation passed the Parliament on 31 January 2019. The 317,000 British .eu domain names were subject to Brexit negotiations because the .eu domain is reserved for European Union use. The .eu Brexit would have occurred on 30 March 2020, in case of no deal, but had since been postponed to January 2021. The UK-EU free trade deal does not cover .eu domains. The United Kingdom Government released guidance for British citizens regarding .eu domains in October 2020, and .eu holders with a British address attached have been contacted twice by the domain registry regarding their domains – once in October 2020, once in December 2020. British citizens had their .eu domains suspended on 1 January 2021 for three months, and then deleted on 1 March 2021 after a grace period to allow EU/EEA citizens to update the registration information to show their non-UK address. This is the first case of its kind where an institution managing an internet top-level domain has withdrawn domains en masse for an entire country. Use by the European Union institutions The second-level domain .europa.eu has been reserved for EU institution sites, with institutions and agencies making the switch from .eu.int to .europa.eu domains on the Europe day of 9 May 2006. Actual use The main users of .eu domains are websites with pan-European or cross-border intentions and audiences. It is often used to emphasise the 'European identity' of a website, as opposed to the website having a strictly national ccTLD or global "dotcom" nature. Alternative (opportunistic) uses include Basque webpages (as the initial letters of Euskadi or the language Euskara) and Romanian, Portuguese, or Galician personal sites,