Thousands of vehicles that have already been sold in Greece are being held back from delivery because registration cannot be completed amid renewed shortages of government-issued number plates, according to industry information obtained by Energodromio.
The problem, which has affected parts of the country for several months, is now being felt more acutely in Attica, Greece’s largest vehicle market. Industry representatives estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 vehicle deliveries are currently pending, while the remaining stock of passenger-car plates is thought to have fallen below 5,000 pairs.
The situation is more severe for motorcycles, with several regional authorities already facing significant shortages. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport says the problem is not uniform across all regions for passenger cars, but acknowledges shortages affecting two-wheelers in a number of areas.
The immediate response involves moving available plate stocks between regional transport departments while the ministry seeks approval for another emergency procurement procedure. At the same time, the shortage is accelerating wider plans to reform the way Greece produces, distributes and allocates vehicle registration plates.
The shortage affects the final stage of the vehicle registration process.
Cars may already have been sold, purchase agreements signed and payments completed, but dealers cannot deliver the vehicles for normal road use until registration has been completed and official plates issued. Energodromio reports that the resulting backlog has grown into the thousands.
The problem has not emerged suddenly.
On 3 February 2026, the Region of the Ionian Islands publicly stated that its local transport departments were not responsible for shortages affecting passenger cars, motorcycles and other vehicles, describing the supply of number plates as a responsibility of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. The region said it had repeatedly contacted the ministry over the issue.
By early May, reports of delayed car deliveries had become widespread. At that point, the Ministry of Transport said tens of thousands of plates had been distributed and described the immediate problem as having been addressed. The renewed shortages reported in August indicate, however, that the emergency supplies did not provide a lasting solution.
The roots of the current shortage lie partly in difficulties affecting the state procurement process for metal registration plates.
The Hellenic Court of Audit examined sections of an open international tender launched by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and identified material legal irregularities during its pre-contractual review. It therefore ruled that the relevant draft contract could not be signed.
The position was recorded in Act 358/2025 of the competent chamber and subsequently in Decision 250/2026 of the Court’s Seventh Department.
This distinction is important: the Court of Audit did not simply “block” a lawful procurement process. Rather, as part of its statutory pre-contractual scrutiny, it identified substantive legal deficiencies that prevented the contract from proceeding in its submitted form.
To prevent vehicle registrations from coming to a halt, the ministry subsequently resorted to a negotiated procedure without prior publication for an emergency supply of registration plates. The procurement covered:
On 7 April 2026, the competent Commissioner of the Hellenic Court of Audit found no material legal deficiencies preventing the emergency contract from being signed. Those supplies temporarily relieved pressure on vehicle registrations, but market estimates reported by Energodromio indicate that stocks are again approaching critical levels.
The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport maintains that there is currently no generalised shortage of passenger-car plates affecting every Greek region. It does, however, acknowledge supply constraints in certain areas and shortages affecting motorcycles. Available stocks are therefore being redistributed among regional authorities in an attempt to direct plates towards areas experiencing greater registration demand.
According to Energodromio’s reporting, the ministry has also submitted a new request to the Hellenic Single Public Procurement Authority (HSPPA) seeking approval for another negotiated procurement procedure that would allow a larger quantity of plates to be ordered.
HSPPA is Greece’s independent public procurement authority and is the official English name corresponding to the Greek acronym ΕΑΔΗΣΥ. The immediate objective is to prevent the stock shortage from developing into a wider interruption of vehicle registrations and deliveries.
Beyond the emergency measures, the ministry is examining a more substantial redesign of the plate-distribution system, according to information obtained by Energodromio.
Under the model being considered, vehicle dealers or owners would be able to order registration plates electronically as part of the registration process rather than relying exclusively on centrally procured physical stocks distributed in advance to regional authorities.
The proposal envisages the creation of a registry of certified plate manufacturers. Production orders could then be distributed among approved manufacturers, subject to specified delivery deadlines. The objective would be to reduce the system’s dependence on large central procurement exercises that can be disrupted by administrative appeals, legal challenges or other delays.
At present, however, this broader certified-manufacturer model should be regarded as a policy option under consideration rather than an operating system. Energodromio’s reporting provides details of the proposal, but no corresponding final regulatory framework for this specific production model was identified in the publicly available official material reviewed for this English edition.
A related reform is further advanced than the original Greek article suggests. Greek law already provides a statutory basis for vehicle owners to request a particular available letter or number sequence when new registration plates are issued.
Law 5290/2026, published on 30 March 2026, inserted Article 90A into Greece’s Road Traffic Code. The provision establishes “special-combination plates” and allows an applicant to request a specific available combination subject to an application and payment of an additional fee.
The legislation also stipulates that 50% of the additional fee revenue is to be allocated to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport for road-safety and transport-improvement measures, with the remaining 50% going to the state budget.
Implementation still requires a joint decision by the Ministers of Infrastructure and Transport and National Economy and Finance. That decision must determine the amount of the additional fee, the application and allocation procedure and the technical details of the electronic platform through which special-combination plates will be administered. Accordingly, personalised or “premium” registration numbers are not merely an informal proposal awaiting primary legislation. The statutory framework already exists; what remains is the secondary legislation and technical implementation required to activate the scheme.
The immediate physical shortage of metal plates is separate from another structural issue facing the Greek registration system: the gradual exhaustion of available letter-and-number combinations.
Greece’s current passenger-car numbering format — three letters followed by four digits — dates from 1986. The system uses letters that can be recognised in both the Greek and Latin alphabets, and the pool of combinations has become increasingly constrained, particularly in Attica, where a large share of the country’s vehicle registrations takes place. The ministry has therefore been examining alternative future formats, including the addition of another character or other changes that would significantly expand the number of combinations available for newly registered vehicles. This is a different problem from the current shortage.
The 2026 supply crisis concerns the physical availability and procurement of metal registration plates, while the longer-term reform concerns the finite number of registration codes that can be generated under the existing numbering architecture. Keeping those two issues separate is important because they require different solutions: procurement and distribution reform can address the physical supply problem, while a change to the numbering format is needed to increase the pool of available registration combinations.
Although registration plates are a relatively low-cost administrative component of vehicle ownership, their absence can stop the entire delivery process.The current situation illustrates how a disruption at a narrow point in a public administrative supply chain can affect dealerships, buyers, vehicle importers and regional transport departments simultaneously.
For consumers, the practical consequence is straightforward: a purchased vehicle may remain at the dealership even though the commercial transaction itself has been completed.
For the automotive sector, a backlog of 10,000 to 15,000 pending deliveries — if industry estimates reported by Energodromio are confirmed — represents a material disruption to the normal conversion of vehicle sales into completed registrations and customer deliveries.
The ministry’s immediate challenge is therefore to secure sufficient physical stocks to restore normal registration flows. Its longer-term challenge is broader: replacing a procurement and distribution mechanism that has proved vulnerable to disruption with a more flexible, digitally managed model.
