Romanian car number plates

The standard format for vehicle registration plates in Romania is a blue vertical stripe (the "Euroband") on the left side of the plate displaying the 12 stars of the European Union and the country code of Romania (RO), followed – in black characters on a white background – by a one- or two-letter county code and a combination of two or three digits and three capital letters. On plates issued before 1 January 2007 the flag of Romania was used instead of the 12 European stars. The digits and letters are usually assigned at random, unless a customization fee is paid. The plates are issued for each car and for each owner, and they must be returned when the car is either sold or scrapped, although the new buyer is entitled to request continued use of the old number plate. Letter combinations that may form obscene text in Romanian are not issued. The letter "Q" is not used as it may be confused with "O". Also the three-letter code cannot start with "I" or "O", as they can be mistaken with "1" or "0" (until 1999, "I" and "O" were not used at all).

The front plate usually carries a round label displaying the month and year until when the technical inspection of the vehicle is valid. They have different background colors depending on the year displayed.

From 1 January 2010, the authorities in Bucharest began issuing plates with three digits instead of the former two, as it was estimated that the number of available two-digit combinations would run out before the end of that year.

In Romania, vehicle license plates are issued based on:

There are six other types of license plates in use in Romania:

This is the table of counties, their county code and their county capital cities.

Plates were first issued at the beginning of the twentieth century. The plates took the simple form of white numbers on a black background, and were home made. The numbers belonged to the owner and not the car, and the list of owners and their numbers was published monthly in the Revista Automobila magazine, edited by the Romanian Royal Automobile club. As there were so few cars (139 in 1908), it was not necessary to note the region on the number plate. Registration was done centrally by the Mayor of Bucharest. Interestingly, the first number registered was 0, to Prince Bibescu, president of the Automobile Club (ACR). Institutes as well as individuals could own the numbers.

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Wikipedia