Something has shifted in the IPv4 market across Europe. Regulators, the regional internet registry, and enterprises are all reacting at once to a supply of legacy address space that keeps shrinking. If you’re a network engineer or IT manager planning an acquisition in 2024 or beyond, you can’t really ignore the regulatory side anymore. It hits your budget, your transfer timelines, and how much risk you’re carrying.<\/p>\n
The RIPE NCC, which hands out IPv4 resources across Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, ran out of its available pool back in 2019. Since then the secondary market has been where addresses actually come from, and RIPE’s transfer policies govern it. The rules have been getting tighter, slowly but steadily:<\/p>\n
Every tightening adds friction. Good for buyers in one sense, sure. But it also pushes up the effective cost of an acquisition, and brokers and sellers fold that straight into the prices they quote.<\/p>\n
The EU’s NIS2 Directive came into force in 2023 and is being transposed into national law through 2024\u20132025. It classifies ISPs, hosting providers, and plenty of enterprises as essential or important entities, with obligations around incident reporting, risk management, and network resilience.<\/p>\n
The knock-on effect on demand is subtle, but it’s there. Organizations that once leaned on CGNAT or IPv6 transition plans are now auditing how resilient their infrastructure actually is\u2014and for many of them, owning clean, geographically diverse IPv4 blocks is still the simplest hedge. This compliance wave has brought steady institutional demand into a market where supply is fixed, which supports the $35\u2013$50 per-IP range seen in recent transactions.<\/p>\n
There are EU-specific wrinkles in how deals actually get done, too. GDPR obligations mean the buyer and seller identity data exchanged during RIPE transfers has to be handled carefully. And because there’s no unified EU framework for intangible asset transfers, national contract law governs each deal\u2014one more layer of complexity when buying across borders.<\/p>\n
What that looks like in practice:<\/p>\n
Even with the regulatory friction, EU pricing tracks global benchmarks fairly closely. A few characteristics stand out, though:<\/p>\n
| Factor<\/th>\n | Effect on EU IPv4 Pricing<\/th>\n | Direction<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n |
|---|---|---|
| RIPE transfer due diligence<\/td>\n | Higher transaction costs passed to buyers<\/td>\n | \u2191 Upward<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| NIS2 compliance demand<\/td>\n | Institutional buyers entering market<\/td>\n | \u2191 Upward<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| IPv6 adoption progress<\/td>\n | Moderates long-term demand growth<\/td>\n | \u2193 Downward<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Blacklisting \/ dirty blocks<\/td>\n | Discounts of 10\u201330% on tainted space<\/td>\n | \u2193 Downward (for sellers)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n |
| Economic conditions<\/td>\n | Slower enterprise capex softens bids<\/td>\n | \u2193 Downward<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n Leasing has become a genuinely attractive alternative, with EU rates typically running $0.30\u2013$0.60 per IP per month. If your capacity need is short-term, leasing lets you sidestep most of the regulatory overhead that comes with an outright transfer.<\/p>\n Practical Advice for Buyers and Sellers<\/h2>\n
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