Other European countries/territories
† = Disputed state, may not be recognized as an independent state by some or all European Union members.
*A variable dialing plan has different dialing procedures for local and long-distance telephone calls. A call within the same city or within an area is dialed only by the subscriber number, while for calls outside the area, the telephone number must be prefixed with the destination area code. A fixed dialing plan requires to dial all digits of the complete telephone number, including any area codes.
1996 single numbering plan proposal
In 1996, the European Commission proposed the introduction of a single European telephone numbering plan, in which all European Union member states would use the country code 3. Calls between member states would no longer require the international access code 00. Instead the digit 1 was proposed for these calls, replaced by the country code 3 for calls from outside the EU. Each country would have a two-digit country code after the 1 or the 3. Calls within each country would not be affected.
This proposal would have required states such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark and others, whose country codes began with the digit '4', to return these to the International Telecommunication Union.
A green paper for the proposal was published, but the disruption and inconvenience of the change was deemed to outweigh any advantages.
A disadvantage would have been that every local number beginning with "1" would have had to be changed (except emergency number which would be kept). Furthermore, the change would have caused many dialing errors or misdirected calls, if callers use an old telephone number with the previous country code.
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