The left side of the plate bears a blue vertical strip (the "Euroband") displaying the 12 stars of the European Union and the country code of Romania (RO).

The front plate usually carries a round label displaying the month and year when the technical inspection of the vehicle is due.

The digits and letters for the standard license plates are usually assigned at random, unless a customization fee is paid.

Customizing is limited to picking the digits and the 3 capital letters at the end, provided the chosen combination is not already assigned.

Such combinations are done only as a convenience; they are not reserved, are assigned only while numbers last, and can additionally be explicitly requested by anybody, regardless of affiliation to that company or organization.

[1] Combinations which the public has consistently refused to use, such as JEG (clunker, wreck of a car) or BOU (insult with the meaning of "dumb") are not included in the random assignment pool, but may still be explicitly requested.

Colloquially referred to as red numbers, the short-term temporary plates consist of the European strip, followed by the county code and three to six digits, of which the first is always zero and the second is always non-zero.

Additionally, on the right side there is a red strip containing the end date of the plate's validity in YY/MM format.

This kind of plate is used most often for foreign nationals who take temporary residence in Romania, and for cars that fall under a leasing agreement.

The text consists of a code which can be CD (Diplomatic Corps), TC (Consular Transport), or CO (Consulate), followed by 6 digits.

However TC licence plates are issued to foreign NATO officers based in Romania and other organisations in addition to Consulates.

Table of codes (incomplete): The Romanian Armed Forces and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are allowed to issue plates in a special format which does not fall under normal regulations.

The format, size and style is decided by each such organization via internal regulations and may not resemble other types of plates.

Ministry of Interior plates start with "MAI" and are typically seen on cars belonging to the Gendarmerie, Romanian Police, emergency response units, and some SMURD ambulances.

In the case of rental vehicles such as scooters or quad bikes, they tend to retain the registration plates issued by the authority of the region where the owner resides even when they are used in another jurisdiction.

[15] The published lists show that the numbers were assigned in the order they were requested, without differentiating between physical persons and organizations.

The new system was approved by the police very soon after and a car participating to a race on October 26, 1908 can already be seen bearing the number "9-Bc" (Bucharest).

So, after 1960 a car registered in Craiova as 150-Cv would have changed its license plate to 150-OL, corresponding to the new administrative region Oltenia.

For a while in the 1930s, in Bucharest, numbers between 10,000-B and 12,999-B (the comma was used as thousands separator) were taxis; they carried Tx as an additional tag, as did buses, which started with 15,000-B.

Around 1959, to create a distinction between state-owned and privately owned cars, the latter were given numbers beginning with 5,001 in the provinces and 15,001 in Bucharest.

Thus, many senior Communist leaders had numbers such as 1-B-363, while the Neamț County party secretary had 1-NT-165 on his black Volga.

The new plate design fell in line with modern requirements, allowed far more combinations while simultaneously being simpler to read and remember, mandated the use of reflective plates thus contributing to road safety, and minimized the additional changes required for when Romania would join the European Union.

By 1951 oval diplomatic plates were introduced, with CD (Corps Diplomatique) in red above a three- or four- digit number, in black.

In the pre-1968 system, "CO" (Cetățean de Onoare, Citizen of Honor) was occasionally seen on private cars before 1941.

[18] Wartime Transnistria occupied by Romanian forces briefly had its own special plates.

[citation needed] Vehicles belonging to Romanian royal family all had a rectangular white plate with a drawing of the Steel crown of Romania in the middle.