Underneath the esa.<TLD>, the name of the ESA establishment is added as a further subdomain in all cases, e.g. estec.esa.nl esoc.esa.de esrin.esa.it, etc. This implies that chances of a clash in domain names are *very* small. Whatever you do under the esa.XX domain, postmaster@esa.XX *must* be a valid address. Furthermore, ESA has currently no establishments in CH and therefore no intention to register esa.ch. That already solves the key problem in this case. For the hypothetical case where this would happen, the question remains for me if and how the responsibility for a 2nd-level subdomain can be shared and coordinated between two organisations? A domain "belongs" to one specific organisation; subdomains under it cannot "belong" to or be shared with a completely different organisation. Btw, I also know about another potential conflict coming up - I've heard of plans within Germany to align 2nd-level domain names with the regional abbreviations known to all from German car plates - e.g. K for Cologne, DA for Darmstadt, etc. Crazy idea: if company X moves from Cologne to Darmstadt, its domain name would change, they would have to reprint their letter heads, business cards, etc., and someone would have to cope with all the bounces of mails sent to the old domain name... Assuming that we as international organisation could stay out of this scheme and retain esa.de, this would cause a clash with the region of Eisenach (also ESA), and the same considerations as above would apply. Which makes it unlikely that you could stay out of such a "reorganisation" (I'd rather call it a mess-up). Comments/Suggestions welcome! Contrary to what I've suggested to you long ago, I'd now recommend that you put ESA under the .INT domain; chances are zero that there will ever be a .EU domain for Europe, unless someone can convince the Powers That Be that there is a very clear need for such a "pseudo top level domain", quite analogous to the current 3-letter TLD's; or maybe the analogy could be carried even further by creating a domain .EUR; but then, who is going to manage it? Piet