In the Netherlands you cannot choose your own license plate to avoid incorrect combinations.
The National Road Transport Agency (RDW) has made a remarkable mistake when issuing new license plates for light commercial vehicles. The RDW has, against the usual guidelines, issued 42 license plates with the combination 'BBB', an abbreviation that is also known as the initials of the political party BoerBurgerBeweging. This error came to light during the introduction of a new license plate series, called 'sidecode 12', specifically for vehicles such as vans and pick-ups with a so-called 'grey license plate'.
The first commercial vehicle registered with this new license plate was a Ford Transit Connect, marked with the license plate V-01-BBB. This error was immediately noticeable, as political names are normally included in the list of prohibited license plates, together with other sensitive or inappropriate combinations such as NSB, VVD, PVV and SGP.
The mistake was confirmed by the RDW press officer. She stated that issuing registration certificates with the letter 'B' at the beginning of a three-letter combination was an unintentional error. The RDW quickly intervened by switching to the letter 'D', which turned out to be the technically simplest and fastest solution.
In contrast to Belgium, it is not possible to choose a personalized license plate in the Netherlands. We are currently in the license plate series with side code 10, which follows the arrangement 'X-000-XX'. Although there is little room for humorous combinations in this series, there are more possibilities in the future with the transition to sidecode 11, which will have the structure 'XXX-00-X'.
However, the RDW has already taken preventive measures by removing all vowels from the license plate alphabet, so that combinations such as 'KAK' or 'TOF' will not occur. In addition, there are several abbreviations and words that, although technically possible, are not desirable and are therefore on the prohibited list. This includes political party names and other sensitive or offensive combinations such as GVD, KKK, KVT, LPF, NSB, PKK, PSV, PVV, SGP, TBS, VVD, SS and SD.
