House rejects personalised license plates

The House plenum rejected on Friday, with 25 votes against and 23 for, the regulations providing for personalised car licence plates.

The bill, discussed by the House transport committee, was to allow car owners to acquire personalised licence plates through auction.

The owner of such a plate was to be allowed to use it on his or her vehicle or sell it to another person following approval by the authorities.

The licence plates were to be the same size as conventional ones and bear up to eight digits – numbers and letters –but not mixed, so that they were easy to read.

The measure was aimed at increasing the transport ministry funds through the purchase of theselicence plates.

Toward that end, Transport Minister Marios Demetriades issued a decree last year giving the opportunity to owners of unregistered vehicles to either bid on or directly choose and buy online the numbers of their licence platesfor €100. The decree concerned numbers only.