The new Hungarian license plates may be changed soon!

János Lázár’s construction, investment and transport ministry will inspect how references to authoritarian regimes like the Nazi Germany on Hungarian license plates can be banned by modifying the relevant rules. Lázár’s ministry added they noted the issue only observing the questions of a Hungarian news outlet. In Germany, strict rules are in effect in the issue. The ministry promised they would examine whether Hungary could implement them.

HH, 88, AA, 14 and other symbols on the Hungarian license plates

According to telex.hu, they first asked the government office of Budapest regarding the issue. The office replied that except for combinations breaking the law, public order or morality, one is able to order an individual combination of letters and numbers on a pair of new licence plates. The decision is in the hand of the administrators. In 2022, license plates HH-AA-001, HH-AA-002, and HH-AA-003 were given to individual car owners, bearing reference to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Germany.

Furthermore, last July saw a pair of license plates with the characters HH-HH-888. The Research Institute for Linguistics in Hungary wrote then that it could not be decided whether those characters referred to an authoritarian regime or not because other interpretations were also possible.

Later, they realised the problem. Thus, they wrote to a reader of telex.hu in November that they would not give that pair of HH-AA-004 license plates. The office said it could have likely referred to authoritarian regimes.

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The ministry was unprepared

One of the readers of telex.hu drew the attention of the Hungarian news outlet to the fact that the user with the HH-HH-888 plates previously had the SSI-488 combination on his car. He also bragged about that on Facebook and wrote “My honour is called loyalty 88/14”. The German version of the sentence (“Meine Ehre heißt Treue”) was the motto of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS).

The 88 refers to the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, the double H standing for Heil Hitler. Meanwhile, the 14 is the shorthand for the “14 Words” slogan: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Telex.hu sent its questions to the government office of Budapest, the Ministry of Interior Affairs and János Lázár MP. Lázár’s press chief, Ákos Krakkó, replied that the characters might have been offensive to the public, provided they knew their meaning. He added they were not aware of the odd symbols and code system of the celebrators of the authoritarian regimes.

Lázár’s press chief added they would look for the German regulations where such license plates were forbidden. If it can be adapted in Hungary, they would do so.

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Source: telex.hu