This is quite disgusting. How will these companies rebuild their reputation of their URL's after this? So there will not even be a redirection to the new site?
They could redirect for about 1-2 years; this was announced quite some time ago.
As to why: No other outcome has been negotiated and the rules said that citizens of an EU country may have domains. What do do when a country leaves wasn't a topic when the .eu rules were written, so the thing that's happening isn't what anyone wanted.
AFAICT Theresa May hasn't even asked for any sensible timeout or grandfather rule as part of the brexit negotiations.
