Cancellation of registration and annual maintenance fee for the ".ro" domains

In December 2016, the Romanian government decided to introduce the registration and annual maintenance of the .ro TLD as a prerequisite for aligning “.ro” domains to policies adopted all around the world. Currently, Romania is the only country in Europe that has not introduced an annual maintenance fee for “.ro” domains.

Given the Government’s legislative program for the period 2017-2020 and the list of legislative priorities of the Romanian Government for the first parliamentary session of 2017, providing a bill for the administration of top-level domain “.ro”, Minister of Communications and Information Society Board members mandated the National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI) Board of Directors to cancel ICI decision on the implementation of the registration and maintenance service of domain “.ro”.

The Board of Directors of ICI decided to cancel the previous decision regarding the implementation of the service registration and maintenance of domain “.ro”.

Through the open letter addressed to the Minister of Communications and Information Society, a total of 16 ROTLD partners requested the organization of public consultation on the introduction of annual maintenance fee for the domains “.ro”.

For reasons of stimulating the digital economy and the smooth functioning of the top-level domain register, it was considered necessary to regulate the administration and functioning, in order to ensure a transparent, coherent and unified framework underpining the operation of .ro domain in the public interest.

In view of the foregoing, the schedule for public consultation is as follows.

Monday, January 30, 2017 – publication on the MCSI website of a questionnaire on the principles that will underpin the regulation. Answers to questions and any other terms will be transmitted through the questionnaire online until February 28, 2017. The bill will be drafted by an inter-institutional working group, based on the views received. (NB: there is still no questionnaire on MCSI website. The website is not updated since July 2016.)
In July, the ministry will publish for consultation a draft law. The project will remain in the public consultation for at least 30 days, during which the ministry will organize at least one debate on the bill.
Following the public consultation process, the ministry will present the final version of the bill to the Government in September.