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France license plate: Diplomatic CD

Issued today 2009 to today. Diplomatic plates for car, van, and motorcycle, issued by Ministère de l'intérieur. One of 17 France license plates.

France license plate, Diplomatic CD (2009 to today), sample 600 CD 8433
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Format, years and the law

Format
999 CD 9999, for example 600 CD 8433 (9 any digit)

The opening number is the sending state, 5 is Germany, 45 the United Kingdom, then rank: CD for the diplomatic corps, CMD for the head of mission. A final Z means the car rides tax-free; the rarer X says duties were paid.

CMD
Chef de mission diplomatique (head of diplomatic mission)
CD
Corps diplomatique (diplomatic corps)

The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued.

Years issued
2009 to today. Still issued.
Vehicle class
Diplomatic: diplomatic corps (embassy) issuance, usually its own decode. Issued for car, van, and motorcycle.
Colours
Characters #E87511 Background #0B5D3B
About this plate
CMD / CD, the French diplomatic series. Unlike Germany, which signals diplomatic status only through an ordinary-looking prefix, France gives the corps its own colour scheme, and unlike Spain it uses ONE green for four series and distinguishes them by the character colour. Note the annexe-7 trap the design must carry: a CD or CMD number is ORANGE on green, but the SAME number becomes WHITE on green the moment a Z or X suffix is added (annexe 7 item 2, "Cas particulier"), so character colour is not a reliable series discriminator on its own.

Legal basis and sources

  1. annexe VII D.1 (CMD/CD compositions for ambassades, hautes personnalités and organisations internationales, plus the ESA/Guyane 973 completion) and D.4 (the Z and X suffixes) https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/article_lc/LEGIARTI000030801732
  2. annexe 7 item 2: 'Séries CMD, CD, Le numéro d'immatriculation est reproduit sur chaque plaque d'immatriculation en caractères orangés sur fond vert jaspe.' https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/article_lc/LEGIARTI000052974050
  3. code de la route art. R. 322-2 V: diplomatic vehicles' numbers are completed by a status-linked specific number https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000032401205

This plate in your app

The series id is fr-diplomatic-cd. The API returns its format, validation, colours and designs with the rest of France's series:

curl -s https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/fr \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $VEHICLESDB_API_KEY" \
  | jq '.series[] | select(.id == "fr-diplomatic-cd")'
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