The name European Union is not officially listed in ISO 3166-1 because the standard contains codes of names of countries and not names of groupings of countries or names of organizations. However, the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency advises all users of the ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code to apply the code element EU if they need to represent the name European Union.
ICANN is just a user of ISO 3166 and can decide to use the EU code.
Slashdot Mirror
a quote from the ISO 3166 page:
The name European Union is not officially listed in ISO 3166-1 because the standard contains codes of names of countries and not names of groupings of countries or names of organizations.
However, the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency advises all users of the ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code to apply the code element EU if they need to represent the name European Union.
ICANN is just a user of ISO 3166 and can decide to use the EU code.
Benno