Obviously, because of various trade agreements, Europeans have the ability to acquire a car wherever they like. As an American who is pretty unfamiliar with European license plates, does the country in which the buyer has residency determine where the license plate will be registered after the purchase? Please let me know, thank you.
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You register the plate where you live. If you buy a car in another country you get a special plate that’s specifically meant for buying a car from abroad.
Yes, your licence plates are determined by your country. When you buy a car abroad, you receive temporary transfer plates which you can use to get your new car home. Then you have to register it there and you get local plates.
Keep in mind that the process of car registration can be vastly different from country to country, there isn’t a single unified European system. In some countries, plates are tied to the car (when you sell your old car, you sell it together with plates and you get new ones with new car), in some countries plates are tied to you as a person (when you sell your old car, you remove plates and put them on your new car). Also the agency that issues plates can be different, in some countries plates are issued by insurance companies, in some countries by police etc.
The license plate comes with the car. There’s no different plates for different regions or anything.
Yellow plates for normal cars, blue ones for taxis.
Edit: to clarify I’m only commenting on how it works here in the Netherlands.
If you buy your car abroad, you can register it abroad temporarily and drive it into Slovenia and then register it. You get the Slovenian plate, but can choose the regional coat of arms. There are 11 regional divisions that determine the prefix and up to 13 subregions that determine the coat of arms shown after the prefix.
For example the capital regional division, plates have LJ first, then the coat of arms of the subregion, then the license number. But the Nova Gorica has the GO prefix and is kinda popular with custom plates..
You can buy a car wherever you like but it’s simple as you seem to believe.
Firstly you need to register a vehicle in the country where you live and you can’t legally drive a car with a foreign national plate for more than a certain period of time. So if you buy a car in Germany and want to bring it to Portugal you need to register it and pay a lot of taxes for importing a vehicle. Nowadays it’s rarely worth it, it’s cheaper to buy a car in the country that you live in.
Prices for cars vary a lot from country to country. In Portugal, cars are more expensive than in Germany even tho we earn a lot less money.
It’s issued by the country you register it in. Before that you have to get it’s road safety approved and then you get a license plate in the form ABC-123, which you can choose yourself for an extra 40€ or so.
It comes with a lot of annoying paperwork if you buy a car in another country and Import it. It’s a hassle, you only do it if there is a significant price difference.
Registering cars is exclusively in the countries’ domain. The only benefit of buying a car in another country is if it’s significantly cheaper. You still need to import it (albeit without customs as that’s what the EU is all about), get the homologation (?), and register & insure it in the place where you live.
The plate stays with the car in the UK. You don’t have to update the registration every so often unless you get a personalised licence plate. At which point I think you can opt to transfer it whenever you buy a new car.
We do have a vague [system of local area registrations](https://www.wilsons.co.uk/blog/number-plate-guide), although there’s now only one DMV-like agency, in Swansea, South Wales.
Most stuff like car tax, driving licence applications, etc can be done online through the gov.uk website.
* The plate goes with the car, not with the owner.
* You may sell the car and if it stays in the same area or country, the plate will stay on the car.
* Insurance goes with the car AND the owner – it can cost more or less depending on your personal driving (read that “accident causing”) history
* If you buy a car in a country different than the one you live in, rules are VERY different from country to country. For example I can insure a car with foreign number-plates when I buy it abroad with my french insurance company and I have three weeks to get it registered in France. This is totally unimaginable in Germany – you need to find out about the local legislation.
Each country has its own system. A German license plate looks completely different to a Portuguese one, which looks completely different to an Italian one, which looks completely different to an Irish one and so on. The whole thing is usually based on a region in the country and a year and a number, but how that is done is different across different countries. On one end of the plate there is a little indicator of the country it is from, but other than that it’s quite different in each country. Systems change. Prior to 1987 you would have had to have been in the car trade or a nerd to tell where in Ireland the car came from and its year of registration, but they simplified it then, so now almost anyone can tell.
The license plate is from the country where the car resides and pays taxes. If you to another country you have to change the license and get a local one.
Usually you can drive for 6 months with a foreign plate, but after that the police might fine you and/or apprehend your car. To get a nee license you need to pay specific taxes.
When I moved from Portugal to the UK I sold my car and my motorbike, and bought new ones in the UK. As it would be much more expensive to bring them to the UK and change the license plate. Some friends brought a car from Spain without changing their plates and tried their luck, but after a few months their parking permit was revoked as they issued a temporary permit for a foreign car, and then the car got impounded and they had to pay about £1,000 of fines and expenses. They drove their car back to Spain to sell it, and bought another car in the UK. This was all pre-Brexit.
Rules regarding registration taxes, road taxes, insurance etc. is different from country to country.
The Danish state has a registration tax scheme, where you pay for 3 cars, but only get one car.
You can import a car, but you can’t’ get Danish plates on the car before the VIN is in the database, registered as having paid registration tax.
Due to this the state is very keen on punishing people ‘smuggling cars’, is illegal for a person with residence in Denmark to drive a foreign registered car. If friend from Germany is visiting, I’m not allowed to drive his car in Denmark .
[https://info-skat-dk.translate.goog/data.aspx?oid=2113077&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp](https://info-skat-dk.translate.goog/data.aspx?oid=2113077&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp)
>The district court found T guilty. The penalty was set at suspended prison for 20 days and an additional fine of DKK 56,000. The district court emphasized the size of the evaded tax and the fact that T had not been previously punished.
It is rare to import a car in that way into the UK. Europe is the wrong side of the road to start with, you need to get it physically then get it registered here. People do for things like sports cars though. You can’t drive it under a foreign numberplate for more than a certain time. There are interesting things within the British isles themselves too – Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man all have their own registrations.