A new look for Croatia’s licence plates.
Two and a half years after Croatia joined the European Union, Croatian cars should finally get new license plates. New Interior Minister Vlaho Orepić has announced that new licence plates are already in production. In some cities, there is currently a shortage of license plates, since motor vehicle departments are waiting for the new plates to be officially introduced, reports RTL on February 10, 2016.
“Until now, there were no shortages and we always had enough licence plates, because without them we cannot register vehicles”, says Branko Radoš, manager of a vehicle inspection centre in Poreč. The situation is similar in Osijek, where they expect additional licence plates to arrive shortly. Ivan Grbac, manager of a vehicle inspection centre in Zagreb, says that he ordered just 50 licence plates. “Since it is expected that new license plates will be introduced, in accordance with the EU design standards, we have not ordered more of the old ones”, says Grbac.
Although some vehicle inspection centres currently do not have a single licence plate, Interior Minister Vlaho Orepić claims there are no shortages. “That is not true, the problem has been solved. We are simply trying to introduce some order. New licence plates are already being produced as of this morning, trust me”, said the new Interior Minister.
“We are currently in the process of adapting the regulations with technical specifications and testing their readability in accordance with the standards”, said the Ministry in a statement.
The story about new licence plates has been going on for almost three years. First the Interior Ministry ignored designers and then it received heavy criticism for excluding the coat of arms for a proposed design. This summer they reached a compromise with designer Gordan Resan. He did not want to reveal the final design, but he did explain his main idea. According to him, the coat of arms should go to the right side, the EU logo to the left side, while the font should be similar to the one used on current plates.
He repeatedly stressed that the final design has not yet been publicly presented and that the version shown by RTL Television on Tuesday was just their journalistic interpretation.
