Citizens of the European Union can now buy an internet domain bearing the .eu suffix.

The public are getting the chance to buy .eu domains following a four-month period that let firms reserve domains to match their trademarks.

More than 300,000 organisations used the so-called sunrise period to apply for a .eu domain.

Interest in .eu is expected to be high as speculators snap up the most popular domain names.

“Nobody knows exactly how many registrations of new domain names to expect,” said Marc van Wesemael, head of .eu administrator Eurid, in a statement. “But the interest so far has been significant.”

Some are expecting the .eu domains to be very popular and said they had been getting lots of enquiries from members of the public.