Greece license plate: Standard 2004

Format, years and the law

Format

LLL-9999, for example TON-7764 (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

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

Years issued

2004 to today. Still issued.

Vehicle class

Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, truck, and bus.

Colours

Characters #000000 Background #FFFFFF

Size

520 × 110 mm · every country's size

• 

  Standard 2004 340×200 mm

  standard · 340 × 200 mm

Typeface

DIN 1451 Teil 4 · license plate fonts

About this plate

THE CURRENT GREEK SERIES. Its legal start is 1 MAY 2004, stated by the instrument itself (art. 9: "Η ισχύς της απόφασης αυτής αρχίζει την 1 Μαΐου 2004"), NOT the gazette date of 4-2-2004 and not the "September/October 2004" that circulates in secondary accounts, the latter is a rollout observation, and both are true statements about different things. What changed on that date was the DESIGN, not the format: the euroband, the DIN 1451 cuts and the security marking arrived, while the three-letter/four-digit grammar and the whole letter allocation were expressly carried over ("παραμένει ως έχει", art. 1 para. 5). A parse API must return BOTH as candidates for any well-formed ΛΛΛ-9999 string and must not claim the era from the string. Art. 1 para. 1 gives the plate count: two plates per car (one front, one rear), one plate for a motorcycle or a trailer.

How the region is encoded

The FIRST TWO of the three letters denote the issuing Directorate of Transport. Two cautions a parse API must honour: the prefix is NOT unique on its own (NX means either Thessaloniki-motorcycle or nationwide-haulage-truck, so the vehicle category is part of the key), and 34 of the 195 rows are allocations not yet in issue.

How numbers are issued

So a Greek plate decodes to PLACE, not to time, there is no age signal in it at all, unlike the UK memory tag or the Dutch sidecode. Whether the third letter is strictly sequential within a Directorate was not sourced; the decode table's per-code notes record several triples the source reports as skipped (e.g. ΑΗΗ, ΑΙΙ, ΕΒΒ), which is consistent with a doubled-letter avoidance rule but does not establish one.

Separators

THE HYPHEN IS STATUTORY AND IT IS A PHYSICAL OBJECT. Art. 3 para. 2 lists the elements of the plate left to right and gives the separator its own item, verbatim: "δ) η παύλα πάνω στην οποία και σε ίση απόσταση από αυτήν και το άνω μέρος του μαύρου περιθωρίου υπάρχει ανάγλυφη η σφραγίδα του Κράτους με το εθνόσημο", "the dash, upon which, equidistant from it and from the upper edge of the black border, is embossed the seal of the State bearing the national emblem". The gap between the letters and the digits is not typography and not a Plakette slot as in Germany: it is a printed dash carrying the state seal above it.

Legal basis and sources

1. ΥΑ οικ. 4700/330/2004 (ΦΕΚ Β' 192/4-2-2004) in full: art. 1 para. 2 format + the fourteen letters + digit range + repetition rule; art. 2 construction, colours, euroband geometry, DIN 1451 cuts, security marking,... https://www.dsanet.gr/Epikairothta/Nomothesia/yaoik4700-330_04.htm
2. the Ministry's plate-instrument series, used to establish that ΥΑ 19800/1982 is the base instrument and that it is still being amended. https://www.e-nomothesia.gr/kat-aytokinita/pinakides-kuklophorias/

Before and after

It replaced Standard 1982 1982 to 2004