L'Acajou

Hi

Can anyone give us some advice? We moved over to France in 2004 and life is good! We have transferred our old Landrover onto French plates with relative ease, but next month we are going over to the UK and collecting a touring caravan (they are far more expensive here). Can anyone tell us if it is easy/difficult/impossible to get it transferred over to French plates? We think anything over 500kg has to have it's own carte grise and own registration number. Anybody gone through this? We are in Dept 41 Loir -et- Cher. It would not be a disaster if we couldn't do it but better if we could. Advice gratefully received.

Thanks

mpprh

Hi

as you know, the caravan has to be registered in its own right. So it needs its own certificate of conformity.

Problems can arise if that make/model was never sold in France or the manufacturer has gone bust.

Worth noting that pulling a UK reg caravan with a car on French plates is illegal.

Bonne chance

Peter

L'Acajou

Hi Peter

Thanks for that. It is a 1983 Abbey caravan, I think they are still going and I think they were sold in France, if this is the case, is it like a car, whereby Abbey can provide the bit of paper with all the things they need for a carte grise? We imported our 17 yr old Landy and have also bought a 40yr old Fiat 500 in Italy (that was not so straightforward, but we did it!) I know we will need a bill of sale and I assume there will be a manufacturers plate on the caravan.
We have been told that we can bring the caravan back behind our French reg 4x4 as long as we have a receipt and ferry tickets, we apparently have 2 weeks grace. But, what tempoprary plates should be on the caravan? We could possibly borrow French Garage Trade plates (we did this for the Fiat) Surely there is a way of doing this legally? One set of plates for the UK, one for France? Or perhaps we could (if we are lucky) get the paperwork done before we get to the UK and have the registration plate ready when we collect the van. After importing the Fiat, surely a caravan will be a doddle......

Anyone cast any more light?

Sue

zel

Urm, there could be a way it's definately worth looking into.

MOST EU countries have a system called Export Plates which you purchase from the countries "DVLA" in question. Now I'm not confident at all that the UK has export plate system as the UK is one of the only countries where the license plate is registered to the car, not the person. BUT! I know France/Belgium/Germany/Portugal has this system so it might be worth contacting the French "DLVA" and see if you can purchase a set.

The Export plates do what they say on the tin they allow you to legally move around an exported vehicle for upto a month (but you can purchase them for as little as two days, they do also include insurance)

You have probably seen them without knowing they look like normal plates but have a coloured strip on the right with an expiry date on them.

Hope this helps.

If they don't play ball and say that export plates are for French cars that are to be exported out of the country explain to them that the UK does not have this export plate system as the license plates stays on the vehicle so you will need French export plates to be legally able to tow the caravan into France.

mpprh

Hi

Export plates allow a vehicle to use the roads without VAT having been paid (i.e. tax free cars). The expiry date depends on the category of "tax free" (private, military, diplomatic, other) and the country of ultimate use.

Actually Uk does export plates, too. For vehicles - not for caravans.

I cannot see that the French will issue export plates for an English caravan !

When I imported a car into France, my export plates had an expiry date of three weeks : insurance was extra, too.

It seems that Abbey caravans were taken over by Swift Leisure in 1992.
I guess you need to contact Swift about your CoC.

Bonne chance

Peter

zel

In my extensive expirence of owning and running a vehicle import and export business you are completely wrong unfortunately.

To cut a long story short I will skip to personal imports (as buying via a EU VAT registered company is easy and you just buy it NET (ie without vat))

---

Personal Imports & Export Plates :

Export Plates are soley for exporting a vehicle out of the country they have nothing what so ever to do with the status of VAT payable or not (in some cases list below)

Export plates are issued to preowned vehicles of over six months and 6000KM also where local (ie the country you bought the vehicle from) VAT is included in the sale and *no* vat is payable when you bring it back to your EU country. Export plates are obviously also issued for NEW vehicles also.

There are only 1 or 2 EU countries that allow you to purchase a new (or classed as new) vehicle NET (without vat) without a VAT qualify company. One of which is the Netherlands.

Most countries (on a personal import basis) make you pay their local VAT and once you have payed the VAT in the country the car is registered the company will then repay you the VAT they took (German Law and most other EU countries)

So I repeat, Export plates have NOTHING what so ever to do with the VAT status as you can get export plates for ALL of the above as Export plates are PURELY for exportation of a vehicle out of the country legally (as you also get a vehicle deregistration cert with the export plates)

You are also wrong on the expiry dates of export plates. The days 1-31 is purely based on your preference, You can buy 2 days to get the vehicle back home then off the road until it's registered or you can buy 30 days if you do not have anywhere to legally store the vehicle off road until it's registered.

The only difference between this is that an export plate will be issued without them seeing the vehicle if it's for a short time (ie 2 days) if it's anything like 2+ weeks then they need to inspect it to make sure it's road worthy enough (a very basic look over job) and if the VIN numbers are correct etc.


I'm unaware that the UK did export plates as I've never needed any or ever seen one at the ports. Now knowing that there is i am sure the DVLA will be able to assist with being able to supply the owner of the caravan with a temp registration for it as I'm sure this is not the first exported caravan out of the UK and they would know the rest of europe has a different registration for a caravan compared to the UK.

mpprh

Hi

Interpretation of regulations varies in each EU country. In this case we are looking at the export of a caravan from UK to France.

Belgium issues temporary registration plates because the plate is issued to the owner - not the vehicle. Hence used cars for sale in Belgium are displayed without plates. A similar situation exists in Switzerland.

Both UK and France issue plates specific to the vehicle. Temporary plates are issued subject to meeting C&E or Douanier requirements. Export plates are only issued to new vehicles for export to EU & non EU countries. Info is here for UK. Note that the UK regulations specifically exempt caravans.

Such plates have a life of 2 months in UK (3 weeks in Sweden where mine were issued).

I cannot see any legal means for L'Acajou to get temporary plates on his caravan.

More difficult for L'Acajou could be obtaining the CoC for eventual registration in France. With a CoC he could try and get his French registration before importing it. And if he can't get a CoC, it is probably not worth trying to obtain single vehicle approval.

I think he may get more precise information from a caravan club.

Peter

L'Acajou

Hi

We have contacted Swift who were not terribly helpful, they say that the paperwork simply doesn't exist. Seems odd when I could import a 40 yr old car from Italy, but there you go! So we are hoping we will be able to get the temporary plates from our prefecture, our local garage have said this is the route to take. I think we will phone the prefecture first, just in case.

The French love their rules and regulations, but even more than that they love to find ways round the rules and regulations. It is a national sport!

Thanks for the advice, fingers crossed!

Sue

QUOTE=mpprh]Hi

Export plates allow a vehicle to use the roads without VAT having been paid (i.e. tax free cars). The expiry date depends on the category of "tax free" (private, military, diplomatic, other) and the country of ultimate use.

Actually Uk does export plates, too. For vehicles - not for caravans.

I cannot see that the French will issue export plates for an English caravan !

When I imported a car into France, my export plates had an expiry date of three weeks : insurance was extra, too.

It seems that Abbey caravans were taken over by Swift Leisure in 1992.
I guess you need to contact Swift about your CoC.

Bonne chance

Peter[/QUOTE]

mpprh

Hi

Can you let us know how you got on ?

Peter

L'Acajou

Hi

Just arrived home in the early hours, complete with caravan. We have drawn a blank with regards to the carte grise, the prefecture could not help us and seemed to have no solutions for us. So, I'm afraid, after much deliberation, we had to get the caravan back with a french plate off one of our farm vans, so at least it looked correct! Not the ideal solution, but the caravan will stay on the farm anyway. We may try to sort it out at a later date, we have all docs for the caravan. Thanks for your interest, if we do make any progress, I'll let you know!

Sue

mpprh

Hi

sorry to hear that.

There are quite a few unregistered UK caravans near me available for static holiday rentals because they were imported on UK plates and the current owners have not been able to register them !

One, I know of, has been here for 15 years. The owner is a law lecturer.

The situation is very different from importing cars.

Peter