Vehicle registration plates of France
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As of 2005[update], France has three main kinds of motor vehicle registration plates:
- General scheme
- Military plates
- Civilian state administration plates (domaines).
Contents |
[edit] General scheme (1950-2009)
The plate bore a "number" of the following formats: either nnnn LL dd, or nnn LLL dd.
- nnn (or nnnn) is a 2-, 3- or 4-digit number.
- LL (or LLL) is a 2- or 3-letter group.
- dd is a 2-digit number indicating the département in which the car is registered.
Exceptions to this scheme are:
- in Corsica, the département identifier was either 2A (Corse-du-Sud) or 2B (Haute-Corse) since 1975. Prior to that date, all of Corsica was a single département with the identifier 20.
- in the overseas départments, the département identifier consisted of 3 digits (in the series 971 to 978), the first two digits often being stacked to save space.
Vehicle owners must re-register their vehicle if they relocate permanently to another département. There used to be a once-per year tax on cars, called the vignette, whose rate depended on the department. This tax now exists only for corporate-owned vehicles (and there exist exemptions for small numbers of vehicles); it is thus no longer important to know the department of a car on sight. Furthermore, computerized files allow large national databases to be maintained without the need for them to be split them at local level.
A side effect of the vehicle tax system was that many corporations registered their vehicles in departments, such as Marne (51), with lower rates. Regulations aimed at preventing such schemes were passed in 1999.
[edit] General scheme (from 2009)
As of 2009 French vehicle registration plates are issued using the XX-NNN-ZZ format, successfully introduced by Italy in 1994, composed of a series of 7 alphanumeric characters, made up of 2 letters, 3 numbers and then 2 letters (for instance: AB-123-CD). There is no longer a local département code as in the previous system, but only a sequential number. This number is allocated to a vehicle for its life and does not change if the car is sold or the owner moves. There is a mandatory blue strip on the right of the plate, showing the Département Number of the owner, or if preferred, the département number of their choice, plus the region logo of the chosen département. [1]
Plates, front and rear, can both be black-on-white since 2007. Black-on-yellow rear plates are now optional.
Due to the current economic climate, the introduction of the new plates was postponed from 1 January 2009 until 15 April 2009 for all new cars. [2]
[edit] Military plates
Military plates bear an 8-digit number, as well as, generally, the insignia of the branch of the military forces to which they belong:
- French Army
- French Navy
- French Air Force
- French Gendarmerie
- Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (DGA)
- Service de santé des armées (SSA) and other small services .
[edit] Civilian state administrative plates
These concern civilian vehicles owned by the national government; it does not include local governments.
They are of the form dddL nnnnM.
- ddd is a 2- or 3-digit department number.
- L is either D, R, N or E: it means that the normal circulation zone of the vehicle is the registration department and neighbouring ones, the registration region and neighbouring ones, the full national territory, or the full national territory and foreign countries. Local service vehicles are generally coded D. French National Police vehicles with police insignia are coded N.
- nnnn is a 4-digit number and M is a letter.
National police forces are registered in using this scheme while municipal police forces are registered in using the standard scheme.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Site on French registration plates
- Feature about the shake-up in the car registration system in 2009 - Radio France International
- A French game of numbers, From Our Own Correspondent, BBC News, 22 December 2005.
