EURID the company that manages the .Eu ccTLD issued its report this morning for the third quarter of 2012.

Here are the relevant numbers:

“The number of registered .eu domain names rose by 7.4% to 3.67 million when compared with Q3 2011.”

“This year-over-year growth is very much in line with Q2’s result of 7.6%”.

“There were 8% more new .eu registrations in Q3 than during the same months last year.”

“The countries showing the highest Annual growth rate where:

“Malta 35.1%
Slovakia 22.3%
Austria 20.6%
Greece 16.8%
Spain 11.1%t

“The quarterly data shows that Malta, Greece, Slovakia and Spain all grew by more than 5% in Q3.”

“Renewal rates stayed strong during Q3 at an average of 81%, somewhat higher than the industry average.”

The total number of .eu domain names registered at the end of Q3 represented an increase of 7.4%, or 251 799 registrations, when compared with the total number at the end of Q3 2011.

The number of Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) in the .eu portfolio at the end of Q3 2012 was 61,752, or 1.7% of all registrations.

When a domain name changes hands, EURid calls the process a “trade”.

The registrar for the new registrant initiates the trade, which must then be confirmed by both the existing registrant and the new holder of the domain name.

During Q3 2012, 15,899 domain names out of 3.67 million were traded.

This means that about one name out of 230 was traded; down from Q3 2011 when one in 210 was traded.

New registrations, deletions and renewals:

There were 208,298 new .eu registrations in Q3 2012.

The number of new registrations was 8% higher than during the same months in 2011.

During Q3 2012, there were 143,742 deletions.

“The countries in the top ten list account for 88.4% of all .eu registrations.

Top ten countries with most .eu registrations:

Germany
Netherlands
France
United Kingdom
Poland
Italy
Czech Republic
Austria
Belgium
Spain