# Greece license plate: Standard 2004

> The Greece standard 2004 license plate: format LLL-9999, for example TON-7764, 2004 to today, car, van, truck, and bus.

Page: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/greece/standard-2004 · Markdown version of the HTML page, which is canonical. Site map: https://vehiclesdb.com/llms.txt · Terms of use: https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/terms

Part of [Greece license plates](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/greece) (7 registration series).

![Greece license plate, Standard 2004 (2004 to today)](https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/gr/gr-standard-2004/greece-license-plate-standard-2004.svg)

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | `LLL-9999` (L is any letter, 9 any digit) |
| Years | 2004 → today |
| Class | standard |
| Issued for | car, van, truck, bus |
| Plate size | 520 × 110 mm |
| Other sizes | 340 × 200 mm: two-row REAR plate (art. 4) — for vehicles whose manufacturer-provided mounting cannot take the long plate. Row 1: blue field 88 mm high, security marking, the three letters. Row 2: the hyphen with the embossed seal above it, then the four digits. |
| Colours | background #FFFFFF; characters #000000; band #003399 on the left; border #000000 |
| Rear plate differs from the front | no |
| Checking a registration | The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued. |
| Series id | `gr-standard-2004` (https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/greece/standard-2004) |

Sources:

- [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, character metrics, substrate, tolerances; art. 3 the 520x110 one-row plate and the statutory hyphen; art. 4 the 340x200 two-row rear plate; art. 9 commencement 1-5-2004 and the old-stock provision.](https://www.dsanet.gr/Epikairothta/Nomothesia/yaoik4700-330_04.htm)
- [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/)

## 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.

## Before and after

| Relation | Series | Years |
|---|---|---|
| It replaced | [Standard 1982](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/greece/standard-1982) | 1982 to 2004 |

## Other standard plates here

- [Standard 1982](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/greece/standard-1982) (1982 to 2004)
- [Provincial](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/greece/provincial-1972) (1972 to 1984)

## Use it

- Plate image (SVG): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/gr/gr-standard-2004.svg
- Make it with your own text: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plate-generator/greece?series=gr-standard-2004
- API: `GET https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/gr` returns this series as the entry with `"id": "gr-standard-2004"` (https://vehiclesdb.com/api)

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Open data, CC BY 4.0: reuse it with a visible credit to VehiclesDB and a link (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/attribution). Plate images show sample serials and are not open data (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/image-license). Dataset commit db0ec0a: https://github.com/vehiclesdb/vehiclesdb