Can EU citizens drive cars registered outside the EU, when inside the EU?

score:2

Accepted answer

In the strictest sense: Yes, that works1.

(But you should be well-prepared for a discussion with the police, just in case)

Since you mention going to Freiburg, we're talking specifically about Germany, and the relevant applicable laws are §20 FZV and §3/13 KraftStG.

The first one states that it is legal to temporarily use a foreign car with a valid foreign registration. The second one exempts you from having to pay tax.

There are several important preconditions to fulfill:

  • Temporarily means less than one year. For your example, that's the case.
  • The vehicle must not be designated to be regularly registered in Germany. In non-gibberish, this means that trips must usually start abroad, i.e. the car must have it "home base" abroad. It's the car that matters, not you. For a car rented in Basel, that's arguably the case.
  • You must not transport goods or people for profit (or else the tax exemption is void).
  • The car must be properly registered and have an insurance, with papers in German. No issue when renting in Basel.
  • The car must be "safe for traffic". Pretty much guaranteed in your case, too.

1Let's be more careful and say: "should work", because you never know. Police sometimes has an odd opinion, even when you are perfectly right, so you cannot ever be sure.

For example, depending on whom you encounter, they can be very inventive for giving out fines on purely imaginary regulations, such as when your first aid kit has no expiry date or the date is expired (there's no law requiring that), or if you drive with perfectly legal daylight ilumination, which the particular police man doesn't recognize as such.

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