officially took effect on 15 July 2007.

As a result of its separation from Guadeloupe, Saint Barthélemy required its own independent international identification code. On 21 September 2007, the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency formally designated BL as the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for Saint Barthélemy. The allocation of an alpha-2 code automatically qualified the territory for a corresponding ccTLD string, which ultimately resulted in the IANA adding to its root zone repository on 11 October