The Brexit is a fact. Now there is a year of “transition period”, after which the United Kingdom will continue under new conditions. A directly visible link to the EU is the blue band with the European flag on the license plates, but will it disappear?
There are of course much more important things that need to be arranged around the Brexit, but it is sometimes nice to look at the consequences for the license plates. We will start in the Netherlands for that. After all, here we saw the blue band with the European flag appear on our plates from the beginning of 2000. In 2003 all cars had to have these new, less susceptible to fraud GAIK plates. The regular yellow plates disappeared as a result (except for special small copies). This was not a change imposed by the EU. However, the country indication on the plates ensured that there was no longer a white NL sticker on the cars for driving in the EU.
Similar records were released in the UK around the same time. There are, however, still several other variants in circulation and cars can also just go on the road with (front and rear) plates without the ‘EU-band’ in front. The British legislation on license plates is therefore much freer than that of the Netherlands. We can still see cars with plates without the blue ‘Euroband’ and country code there. These cars are often somewhat older, but it is also common in Northern Ireland, for example. The blue belt with country indication is absent there (partly due to the historical tensions). When using the simpler license plates, a country code must be affixed to a white sticker on the car if you want to take it abroad. Just like in the Netherlands in the past. This can be GB, but also for example ENG (England) or SCO (Scotland).
So there is currently no very strict license plate policy in the UK. The majority of the new cars will get the modern plates that look like ours. This also remains the case in the transitional period. So little will change for the time being.
After the transition period
In principle, the British can decide for themselves what they will do with their license plates in the future and, due to their geographical location, they can also keep the European flag on the license plate. There is a chance that alternative variants (with a Union Jack in the blue belt for example) will pop up more often.
If a no-deal Brexit had come, the British (regardless of the type of license plate) had to put a white sticker with GB directly on the car if they wanted to enter the EU by car. There is a chance that this must be done after the transition period. In that case it does not matter whether there is already a country indication or Eurovlag on the license plate itself. With that, the usefulness of this has actually also expired, so perhaps records will be chosen more often without the blue band and therefore also without the European flag.