These are former license plates from the Balkan countries. Do you think they look better than the ones you have now?
Posted by Antique_Birthday6380@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 28 comments
Panceltic@reddit
Slovenian is the same, just with added EU band
DifficultWill4@reddit
I prefer the EU band one, the old ones look so lame
NoSync22@reddit
I hadn’t seen the old Bosnian ones in quite a while, that was a much more common format. I wonder how they came up with the weird ones they have now (I understand why they wouldn’t want to have geographical identifiers, but the common European format used in many countries doesn’t have them either).
MartoVBG2K5@reddit
The Bulgarian one is almost the same, except that the BG flag is replaced by the EU stars, but otherwise it is still the same.
gobgobgobgob@reddit
Yeah really ugly and uninspiring too. There are so many better looking EU ones currently (take Italy for example).
NoSync22@reddit
Italy’s plate is actually one of the worst in Europe, together with Spain - a weird font, spacing which doesn’t help eligibility and basically no anti-counterfeit features.
gavats@reddit
the turkish one is the same but only with a blue stripe. i remember in the 90s i had to stick a massive TR sticker on the back of the car. i am glad that i dont have to do that anymore
Cheap_Grocery8634@reddit
It's interesting how many of them just swapped out national symbols for the EU strip, but kept the core design. Honestly, the older ones feel more distinct and characterful, while the new ones are just standard-issue European plates. The Bulgarian one losing the flag for a generic blue band is a shame.
Local_Collection_612@reddit
Why is Sofia CB( SV cyrillic)? S ofc makes senne but the V not
cameliap@reddit
License plate numbers are never reused.
It was originally C. Then they ran out of combinations of digits and letters for the rest of the "number", so they started issuing license plates starting with CA. Then they ran out again, so now they issue license plates starting with CB.
CO is Sofia province (София-област), the region around the city itself, so that's different.
CataphractBunny@reddit
Croatian plates actually got better looking with the addition of the blue EU stripe at the left. Old plates, which there are still tons around, always bothered me with that off-center alignment.
Ujemegaz@reddit
Nah, the current ones look better.
Antique_Birthday6380@reddit (OP)
I think that the older one looks cool too.
Ujemegaz@reddit
The eagle in the old one is not even accurate.
shilly03@reddit
The new eagle is much better but they should‘ve kept it in red and black
Ujemegaz@reddit
Maybe you are right. National symbols shall not be altered in any form or color.
cameliap@reddit
Same difference. For license plate I like better (Bulgaria), you have to go further back. Both the current ones and the one you showed only use letters from the Cyrillic alphabet that are shared with the Latin alphabet. Which for some provinces makes no freaking sense.
For example, the plate you showed starts with the letters BH, which stands for Vidin (Видин). Ok, this kind of works. What does PB stand for though? Ah, Plovdiv (Пловдив). So now we use the Latin version of the name of the city (the P), combined with the Cyrillic version of it (the B)? Um... Then, what does A stand for? You'd never guess. Burgas (Бургас). Because they couldn't figure out anything better (and the B was assigned to Varna (Варна)), they just dropped the case and said, you know what, let's use the name of a different city from the same province, Aitos (Айтос), so now the license plates in Burgas province start with A.
No. Freaking. Sense.
Stupid, stupid decision.
OK rant over.
Panceltic@reddit
Same in Poland haha, you can see they started assigning letters in some kind of a logical order, either the biggest city in the region or the name of the region itself, but then it quickly broke down. And now poor Łódź is ... "E".
cameliap@reddit
In Bulgaria, E stands for, naturally, Blagoevgrad (Благоевград).
No-Championship-4632@reddit
Shit can go worse. Like ЕВ for Gabrovo or (gotta be some communist that did that) TX for Dobrich.
cameliap@reddit
For sure, I just gave a couple of examples off the top of my head. There are more.
Antique_Birthday6380@reddit (OP)
That’s pretty confusing tbh.
M84SB@reddit
Current serbian looks better than older in my opinion
Young_Owl99@reddit
Our current one was a preperation to enter the EU. The blue side on the left and “TR” is written but never got the EU logo on top of it.
468579@reddit
How they look now?
Antique_Birthday6380@reddit (OP)
All have adopted the European model; those countries that are part of the EU also have the EU flag.
abandonedtulpa@reddit
dragos_av@reddit
I can speak for the Romanian one. They have the EU flag instead of Romania's, keeping the "RO" for identifying. The rest is unchanged.