As I only found French articles, I'll make a summary here.
Next year (July 2010) Belgium will start to use European license plates.
It was the last EU-country which did not yet had EU-plates.

So the new plates will be bigger, with 7 digits/characters (instead of 6 currently), and -worse of all- black instead of the current red for digits/characters. I find that sad. I liked our red-on-white plates.
I bet that Flanders will try to get black-on-yellow (colors of Flanders flag, so they use it everywhere), I wonder if at that time they will find a way to split plates system between regions or not, as they wanted to do that.

They will not force to replace old plates, just use the new system for new plates. As in Belgium the plate is not linked to the car but rather to the owner, but that it costs the same to keep or not the plate when transfering it to another car, the plates are quickly renewed (700 000 new plates per year for 6 000 000 plates currently used...)
So I'll be able to keep the red plate on the 206sw

Thanks for the info. Damn, I always liked the red on white... Could you link to the articles anyway? What's the 7 digit combination?

I don't think Flanders will want yellow plates to avoid looking like Dutch plates. These are not so desirable.

And quickly renewed... you still see so many plates from before 1973, recently the new plates with the reverse combination, plus now euro plates. It will be an odd mix for the next 30 or 40 years...

That is kind of sad, in the name of tradition and Belgium will be given up its uniqueness for that. Was Belgium pressured into changing?

North Carolina now has Reflective White on Red plates (instead of the old Reflective White on Carolina Blue plates, which I miss ... )

I too am wondering what Belgium's reason was for switching over to EU plates.

And Neptune, I'd take those plates anyday over our extremely boring California plates

The same happened to the rest of the EU countries, we all liked our own old ones so Belgium is not going to be an exception... I liked the older Spanish ones because you could know where the car was coming from, you can't anymore since 2000.



To just be like the rest of the European Union, in the same way that most of the countries changed into the Euro, things have to be done, funny how you two consider Belgium as an exception when the rest of the countries had to do it sooner or later, Belgium was just being lazy in changing the plates issue

It is currently a project, not 100% sure.
And it does not seem that they are forced to do it; they do it just to do like the other countries



You can find many, e.g.:
http://www.actu24.be/article/societe/la_plaque_dimmatriculation_europeenne_arriv- era_le_1er_juillet_2010_en_belgique_/315851.aspx
http://www.rtbf.be/info/la-plaque-europeenne-en-belgique-en-juillet-2010-124578
etc.
http://www.dhnet.be/infos/belgique/article/226712/nouvelles-plaques-en-2010.html



Not precised, I suppose they will use more numbers than letters, to avoid words on plates.



Sure, their calculation is flawed

Something weird though: they say that currently plates are free, and with the next system they won't be anymore. Maybe the plate are free, but you pay a tax on it, so in the end if is like if you were paying it. So one will have to pay the plate + the tax?

Aren't Belgium and Denmark the last countries of all with the new Euro-plates? In which country except Great Britain you can still choose between Euro-plates and the old-style plates?
In Germany you had the choice between 1995 and the 1.November 2000. Since then you only get the new stlye plates.

It makes angry, that we don't have the chance, like Luxemburg, Denmark and the Netherlands are offering, to take they very old style for classic cars, older than 30 years or so (in NL pre-1977, I think). In this three countries, you can get the plate-style, which was original for such old cars, so white letters and black plates in DK and L and white letters on dark blue plates in NL.
Here it's much worse (in Spain, too). When you tae a historic registration for a classic car, you must take a new euro-style-plate. This has caused, that around 90% of real old (1956+) German plates were disappeared.

In Belgium even if you pay to get a pre-1973 plate it has the post-1973 style but with 5 characters instead of 6.
(and no pre-1951 plate are still in use)

That would be like this:


Of course the only reason is to conform to Europe. In Britain they always refer to the EU as "Brussels" so it wouldn't make much sense that Brussels doesn't have euro-plates. Just like France had to give up their yellow headlights.

The current combination would have lasted for another 20 years, so they don't need a bigger plate with seven digits. I'll just hope they won't use yellow, that ruins the look of any car...

Imagine this on a classic Alfa Romeo:



(ingo: the dark blue oldtimer plates in Holland look very nice, I think 1978 is the cut-off year. I guess it's not possible to register them there? )

Indeed, I prefer white rather than yellow.
Sad that the EU plates do not vary a little, they could at least have different colors between countries, like what is done in US states.

The new French plates are very similar to Italian ones, right down to having an area code on the right hand side that isn't part of the registration number and is only present as a sop to people who complained about the old codes disappearing.

That 04-CD-60 plate chicomarx is showing us, is quite a rare one. It's reserved for Corps Diplomatique. A 'C' is not used in current system.

This is indeed very attractive, because cars older than 25 years are tax-free in NL. This is a reason, why you can see many more bigger older cars, Mercedes and so with Dutch plates (with combinations for later imported cars) than in the past. I remember, when I was small, the average car in Holland was smaller an in a more simple edition than in Germany. So real standard versions of Opel Kadett for example you could see there quite often.


Unfortunately the other life is very expensive in Holland, compared to Germany -especially houses (which are usually not as good as German houses, too)- so it makes no sense for me to "emigrate" 40 kilometers more West. The tax-free registration for my K 70 wouldn't help that much.
There is a guy in our K 70-Club, he acts in this way. He lives on the Dutch side of a small village. There his K 70 is registrated, too. His girl-friend lives on the German side, 200 meters more East - there their all-day-Golf is registrated. All other things were decided "call-by-call", where it's better to be, in the Netherlands or in Germany.

But you still can tell becuase it says the country on the left side of the plate, right?

He means which part of the country (city, province, ...)

@ingo.

If I were you, I should stay were you are. Germany is a nice country I think.

In Holland there is a speed-trap on every corner

Ah, here it's not different. But it depends, where you are. In some Landkreisen (compare with counties in the USA) it's really horrible.

But you can be happy with the conditions of your Autobahn. They are much better than in Germany (and than in Belgium, too).
You can say, that all Dutch roads are in better condition than the German ones.

All other countries 'autobahns are better than in Belgium...

http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=AA2N9FIR

I don't know if there is a French version, but the article says that from July 1 the new European plates will have "9." and then the old combination. Which of course will ruin all personalized plates, which cost about a 1000 euro in Belgium. The minister says it's not a problem because you will only lose your old plate when you register it to a new car.

Weird... and what about non-personalized plates?
What's that "9."? For a minimal length? Other countries have short plates (e.g Luxembourg)