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Registering in the EU - Getting somewhere?
designer - 2/3/11 at 12:09 PM

After chasing all over I now have this reply:

02 March 2011

Dear Mr Fisher

Thank you for your email regarding the registration of your kit car in France.

In order to establish precisely what the situation is with regards to EU law, and given the particular details of your circumstances, I have written to the European Commission to clarify this matter.

Should it transpire that you do need a certificate to register your car, there appear to be ways you can do this. The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) in the UK have confirmed that through a Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) or Individual Vehicle Approval (IVA) they can issue a ‘Minister’s Approval’, which you should then be able to use to confirm your car complies with the standard that is the equivalent of a Certificate of Conformity for the EU. They believe this should be acceptable in France, although you would have to check this with the French authorities. VOSA informed me that you should contact them with as much information as possible on your car for them to advise you further. You can contact them on 0044 300 123 9000 or by emailing them on enquiries@vosa.gov.uk

I will be in touch with the response of the European Commission once I receive a reply.

Yours sincerely

Linda McAvan
Member of the European Parliament, Yorkshire and the Humber

omega 24 v6 - 2/3/11 at 12:30 PM

Don't want to sound negative but in THIS country VOSA says yes DVLA says no and vice versa.

So Gad only knows how the hell you will get on with cross country corespondence/reasoning

However I wish you the best of luck trying.

designer - 2/3/11 at 01:19 PM

You've got to keep trying.

MikeCapon - 2/3/11 at 01:47 PM

Well done Derek,

If you get IVA accepted over here I'll be the first, in what I expect will be a very long line of people, to buy you a beer..

matt_claydon - 2/3/11 at 04:14 PM

The law on this is relatively clear and covered under the European Framework Directive for vehicle approval, 2007/46/EC, Article 24:

quote:

6. The validity of an individual approval shall be restricted to the territory of the Member State that granted the approval.

But...
quote:

Where an applicant wishes to sell, register or put into service in another Member State a vehicle which has been granted an individual approval, the Member State that granted the approval shall, on request, provide the applicant with a statement of the technical provisions against which the vehicle was approved.

i.e. the IVA manual which is freely available.
quote:

With regard to a vehicle which has been granted an individual approval by a Member State in accordance with the provisions of this Article, another Member State shall permit that vehicle to be sold, registered or to enter into service unless it has reasonable grounds to believe that the technical provisions against which the vehicle was approved are not equivalent to its own.

My understanding is that the French do not deem UK IVA to be equivalent to their own standards, and therefore perfectly legitimately do not allow registration using a UK IVA certificate (note that there is no such thing as a 'Ministers Approval Certificate', that was for SVA.

A European politician (or the UK authorities) cannot really clarify this further for you as the European rules above are clear. The French authorities should explain when, or before, they refuse your UK IVA certificate on what grounds they do not deem the vehicle to be up to standard though.

[Edited on 2/3/11 by matt_claydon]

designer - 3/3/11 at 11:16 AM

The French refuse the IVA Certification because it is not a Certificate of Conformity. As simple as that.