Number plates in the EU
Legal July 9th, 2010It is somewhat of a surprise that the Eurocrats at Brussels have not tabled proposals to harmonise number plates across the Union. Now that motoring offences committed in another country are likely to result in punishment in the driver’s own country and the increase of cameras to detect such offences, it would make sense for all European countries to adopt a common system of construction of plates if not a whole new numbering system to cover all countries. At the moment you have a mixture of metal and plastic plates with white, yellow and even red backgrounds with varying numbers of digits some of which have hyphens between certain groups of digits. This must make it unlikely that the software and cameras in one country will be able to read and decipher the registration of a vehicle from another EU country. Considering all the other things that have been harmonised it is amazing that this anomally seems to have escaped the gaze of our illustrious MEP’s. It can only be a matter of time until one realises they have overlooked it and it is added to the list of differences to be removed between countries. Most other specifications such as ABS and ASC are now set by the EU so number plates must follow.
