[ChrisNeedsToKnow]

Originally Posted by tux

Long time ago the EU proposed this: Telephone numbers in the European Union - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But it's an awful proposal. Let's see what Neelie Kroes proposes in September

Ouch! This proposal is really awful, especially because it keeps most of the legacy crap like country codes!

A system similar to the US might be sufficient, albeit it would probably be very hard to introduce?

+3 (or +4) = EU (+appendages like Switzerland, Liechtenstein etc..., just like the US´s +1-system accomodates Canada, Puerto Rico, Bahamas etc...)
3 digits determine the area (aaa)
7 further digits are individual extensions (eeeeeeee)

This way all EU (+appendages) #s could look like this:
+3-aaa-eeeeeee

1000 areas of 10 million numbers each, altogether 10 billion #s.

There are roughly 500m people in the proposed area, so that would leave ~20 numbers per person. If that´s not enough I don´t know. Especially since many crazy people (like me) who currently hoard multiple numbers wouldn´t have to do just that anymore.