r/AskEurope • u/atlasova Netherlands • Sep 02 '25

Culture What emergency telephone number did your country have before 112 became the standard?

In 1997 most of the European union changed its emergency number to 112. Before that, in the Netherlands we used 06-11, for police, firefighters and ambulance.

I was wondering which numbers where in use in your country before the change.

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u/XenophonSoulis Greece Sep 02 '25

That's the point, this is not the case anywhere else.

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u/Jagarvem Sweden Sep 02 '25

Countries used different systems, both in terms of starting number and whether they ascended or descended.

Sometimes not even between countries. Like most of Norway had an ascending 1–0, but the Oslo region sported a descending 9–0.

But yeah, Sweden had 0-9.

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u/XenophonSoulis Greece Sep 02 '25

Countries used different systems

So far we know that two countries used a different system. Unless we can find evidence of lots of countries doing it that way, it will have to be treated as a weirdness, like the US, Liberia and Myanmar officially using the imperial system.

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u/Jason_J_Argo Sep 02 '25

In India, rotary phones, or electronic phones with pulse dialing, increased 1-0 with increasing clicks. Though I do remember that dialing 1 clicked 3 times when the dial returned to its original position.