Vehicle Registration Plates of Europe

Vehicle Registration Plates Of Europe

A European vehicle registration plate is a vehicle registration plate, a metal or plastic plate or plates attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies the vehicle within the issuing authority's database. In the European Union most countries have adopted a common format for number plates, which are issued by member states.

The common EU format was introduced by Council Regulation (EC) No 2411/98 of 3 November 1998 and entered into force on 11 November 1998. It was based on a model registration plate which several member states had introduced: Germany (1994), Ireland (1991) and Portugal (1992).

The EU format is optional in Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and United Kingdom.

• EU format plates are either white or yellow in colour, on a plate wider than it is tall. Yellow registration plates are used both front and rear in Luxembourg and the Netherlands. In Cyprus, Gibraltar and the United Kingdom yellow plates are used at the rear and white at the front. Norway and the UK use flat plastic plates (embossed metal plates are an option in the UK), as opposed to metal plates in most other European countries. A mixture of plastic or metal plates is permitted in France and Ireland. Denmark uses yellow plates for vehicles registered as commercial vehicles and in Greece, Lithuania and Sweden yellow plates are used for taxi vehicles. Belgium uses red characters and is the only country not to use the standard black-on-white or black-on-yellow combination; with the introduction of European-style plates in November 2010, a slightly darker shade of red was chosen (RAL 3003) to improve legibility. In Norway, cars with front seats only (used for cargo) have green plates with black characters. Danish plates have a small holographic strip to the right of the blue EU strip.

• The common design consists of a blue strip on the left side of the plate. This blue strip has the European flag symbol (twelve yellow stars), along with the country code of the member state in which the vehicle is registered.

Vehicles without the EU strip (and associated country code) are obliged to display oval nationality stickers at the rear when driving in other countries, but this law has not always been rigorously enforced.