Number plates

When travelling on highways, guessing the origin of cars is a popular game.
The first sequence of lettres of German and Austrian number plates shows the town or the district. In Switzerland, it indicates the canton.
The last number of French number plates indicates the department. In France, departments are numbered alphabetically. Corsica (2A and 2B, originally 20) and the overseas territories and departments are exceptions.
Since April 2009 regional provenance is no longer visible. A sticker can be added with the number of a département, that the car holder can choose freely no matter if he lives there or not. The table shows the numbers of the départments that were valid before.
For geographic classification, additional information like the region or land is also given.

For the sake of completeness, all the international plates are listed, though most of them are hardly ever seen on European highways. In addition to the plate code, the internet domain, the capital and the continent are also given.

• Austria
• France
• Germany
• Switzerland
• international codes