Telephone numbers in the European Union

Telephone numbers in Europe are managed by the national telecommunications authorities of each country. The country calling codes start primarily with 3 and 4, however, some countries that by the Copenhagen criteria are considered part of Europe have country codes from the Asia range, starting with 9.

The international access code (trunk prefix) has been standardized as 00.

Vatican City has never activated the +379 prefix.

† = Disputed state, may not be recognized as an independent state by some or all European Union members.

‡ = Name disputed by Greece, EU recognizes the Republic of Macedonia as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

*A variable dialing plan has different dialing procedures for local and long distance telephone calls. A call within the same city or within an area is dialed only by the subscriber number, while for calls outside the area, the number must be prefixed with the destination area code. For fixed dialing plan it is always required to dial all digits of the complete telephone number, including any area codes, if implemented.

Despite being fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria for being part of Europe the following countries are in the Asian numbering group, having a country code starting with 9:

Two countries that are geographically in Asia but are considered part of Europe for cultural and historical reasons, belong to the European group 3:

The following service numbers are harmonized across the European Union:

Proposed Country Code: 3

In 1996, the European Commission proposed the introduction of a single telephone numbering plan, in which all European Union member states would use the code '3'. Calls between member states would no longer require the use of the international access code '00'. Instead the digit 1 was proposed for these calls, replaced by +3 for call from outside the EU. Each country would have a two-digit country code after the 1 or the +3. Calls inside each country would not be affected.

Option 3 : Creation, in addition to providing numbers for special services, of a clear European numbering identity (three digit numbering codes) by using the number "3" to proceed current national country codes (e.g. "333" for France or "344" for the UK). This would liberate up to 50 new country codes within Europe and allow the current codes starting with number "4" to be recycled within the world-wide numbering plan. [1]

...
Wikipedia