Road transport operator licence: the four EU conditions

A truck can be bought, financed, taxed, insured and crewed and still not be allowed to carry a single pallet for a paying customer. What is missing is an authorisation to engage in the occupation of road transport operator, and what it takes to hold one starts in Regulation (EC) No 1071/2009, in force in its consolidated version of 21 February 2022, which repealed the earlier Council Directive 96/26/EC. The text that binds today was rewritten by Regulation (EU) 2020/1055, applicable from 21 February 2022 under its Article 4.

The regulation fixes the four conditions and the minimum content of each, and that much is common ground across the Union. It does not finish the job. Article 6(1) leaves Member States to determine the good repute conditions on the Union floor; Article 5(2) lets them add establishment requirements; Article 7(1a) lets them require that the undertaking carry no outstanding non-personal public debts and not be in insolvency; and the third subparagraph of Article 7(1) lets them demand the full heavy-vehicle capital for light vehicles established in their territory. The frame is European. Several of the tests inside it are filled in nationally, and the numbers below are floors and ceilings before they are answers.

Who is inside the regulation

Article 2 splits the occupation in two: road haulage operator means carrying goods for hire or reward, and road passenger transport operator means running passenger services for payment with vehicles constructed and equipped to carry more than nine persons including the driver. Both halves answer to the same four conditions; the passenger side is set out in the operating obligations of a bus fleet.

The exclusions in Article 1(4) are narrower than usually remembered, in three separate ways. First, both weight-based carve-outs are goods-side carve-outs: each is written for undertakings engaged in the occupation of road haulage operator solely by means of the vehicles it describes. Point (aa) takes out those working solely with vehicles or combinations whose permissible laden mass does not exceed 2.5 tonnes. Second, point (a) is conditional as well as weight-limited: it covers haulage undertakings working solely with vehicles or combinations up to 3.5 tonnes and engaged exclusively in national transport operations in their Member State of establishment. Cross a border with a 3.5-tonne van and the exclusion stops applying. Third, none of it is absolute. The chapeau of Article 1(4) opens the whole list with the words “unless otherwise provided for in national law”, so a Member State is free to keep the smallest vans inside its own authorisation system, and several do.

Weight never takes a passenger operator out. The exclusion open to that half of the occupation is point (b), and it turns on purpose rather than tonnage: undertakings engaged in road passenger transport services exclusively for non-commercial purposes, or which have a main occupation other than that of road passenger transport operator. A minibus constructed and equipped for more than nine persons including the driver, run for payment, is inside the regulation whatever it weighs. Permissible laden mass is the figure on the plate, not the load on the day; that distinction is set out in truck weights.

Four conditions, and all four at once

Article 3(1) is one sentence with four limbs. An undertaking shall have an effective and stable establishment in a Member State, be of good repute, have appropriate financial standing, and have the requisite professional competence. There is no trading between them: money does not compensate for a missing transport manager. Losing any one of the four is grounds for suspension or withdrawal of the whole authorisation under Article 13(3).

Establishment is a place with documents in it

Article 5(1) turns “effective and stable” into seven testable items. Point (a) requires premises at which the undertaking can access the originals of its core business documents, electronic or otherwise — transport contracts, documents on the vehicles at its disposal, accounting and personnel records, labour and social security documents, and data on the posting of drivers, on cabotage and on driving time and rest periods. Points (c) to (e) add registration on the commercial register, liability to tax on revenues, and at least one vehicle registered and authorised in that Member State once the authorisation is granted.

Points (f) and (g) are the ones that decide letterbox cases. The undertaking must effectively and continuously conduct its administrative and commercial activities at those premises, and must have at its regular disposal, on an ongoing basis, a number of vehicles that comply with the conditions laid down in point (e) and drivers who are normally based at an operational centre in that Member State — in both cases proportionate to the volume of transport operations carried out by the undertaking. Read the two limbs apart. Being normally based at an operational centre is a test for the drivers; the vehicles are tied instead to point (e), which is registration or entry into circulation and authorisation for use under the law of that Member State.

The eight-week return

Article 5(1)(b) is the provision that changed how international fleets are planned. The undertaking must organise its vehicle fleet’s activity so that vehicles that are at the disposal of the undertaking and are used in international carriage return to one of the operational centres in that Member State at least within eight weeks after leaving it.

Read the frame exactly. It binds vehicles at the undertaking’s disposal used in international carriage; it is satisfied by a return to any one of the operational centres in the Member State of establishment, not necessarily the one the vehicle left; and the clock runs eight weeks from leaving, not eight weeks of foreign work. It is an establishment condition, so a failure is not a roadside offence but a challenge to the authorisation itself — and Article 16(2)(g) puts the registration numbers of the vehicles at the undertaking’s disposal into the national electronic register.

What financial standing ties up

Article 7(1) requires the undertaking to meet its financial obligations at all times during the annual accounting year, and to demonstrate, on the basis of annual accounts certified by an auditor or a duly accredited person, capital and reserves of at least the following amounts.

The last two rows carry a limit the first three do not. That relief lives in the second subparagraph, which is written for undertakings engaged in the occupation of road haulage operator and for nothing else, and its band is vehicles exceeding 2.5 but not exceeding 3.5 tonnes. A passenger transport operator running small vehicles is not in it: whatever its fleet weighs, it answers to the first subparagraph and needs EUR 9 000 for the first motor vehicle used.

The regulation states rates, not totals. A haulier putting ten tractor units over 3.5 tonnes on the road therefore has to show EUR 9 000 plus nine times EUR 5 000, which is EUR 54 000; a courier running six vans over 2.5 but not over 3.5 tonnes on international work has to show EUR 1 800 plus five times EUR 900, which is EUR 6 300. Both totals are our arithmetic from the rates in Article 7(1) and appear nowhere in the text. The third subparagraph matters too: a Member State may require the full heavy-vehicle amounts for light vehicles established in its territory. This is a balance-sheet test rather than a deposit, but a standing one that sits beside every other fixed line in what it costs to run a tractor unit.

Good repute, and the person who carries it

This is the most national of the four conditions. Article 6(1) begins by leaving it to Member States to determine the conditions to be met, then sets a floor the national conditions must include at least. Good repute is assessed on the undertaking, its transport managers, executive directors and any other relevant person the Member State determines.

The floor has two halves, and they are usually collapsed into one. Point (a) asks that there be no compelling grounds for doubting good repute, and gives as its examples convictions or penalties for any serious infringement of national rules in seven fields: commercial law, insolvency law, pay and employment conditions in the profession, road traffic, professional liability, trafficking in human beings or drugs, and — added in 2020 — tax law. Point (b) is the parallel list for Community rules, and it is longer: thirteen areas, and expressly open, since the text has the infringement relate to them “in particular”. They are driving time and rest periods together with working time and recording equipment; maximum weights and dimensions; initial qualification and continuous training of drivers; roadworthiness; market access; dangerous goods; speed limiters; driving licences; admission to the occupation; animal transport; and, added in 2020, the posting of workers in road transport, the law applicable to contractual obligations, and cabotage. The last of those, and the posting rules alongside it, are set out in cabotage and posted drivers.

Annex IV then lists the most serious infringements, among them exceeding the maximum six-day or fortnightly driving limits by 25 % or more, exceeding the daily driving limit by 50 % or more, falsified tachograph records, and carrying by an undertaking that holds no valid Community licence. Article 6(2) turns on that Annex. What triggers the administrative procedure is a conviction for a serious criminal offence or a penalty for one of the Annex IV infringements — not any conviction, and not the criminal route alone. The procedure includes, if appropriate, an on-site inspection at the premises, and during it the authority must assess whether loss of good repute would be a disproportionate response in the individual case. Where the authority does not find that it would, the conviction or penalty leads to the loss of good repute.

Article 4 puts a named person behind all of it. The transport manager must satisfy the good repute and professional competence requirements personally, effectively and continuously manage the transport activities, have a genuine link to the undertaking — such as being an employee, director, owner or shareholder, or administering it, or, where the undertaking is a natural person, being that person — and be resident in the Community. That is a list of examples, not a closed set of permitted relationships.

An undertaking without in-house competence may contract an external manager under Article 4(2). The contract must specify the tasks, and those tasks must comprise, in particular, vehicle maintenance management, verification of transport contracts and documents, basic accounting, the assignment of loads or services to drivers and vehicles, and the verification of safety procedures. Loads or services: read as loads alone, the clause writes coach and bus work out of a contract that has to cover it.

Article 4(2)(c) then caps that person at four different undertakings with a combined maximum total fleet of 50 vehicles — and, in the sentence immediately after, allows Member States to lower the number of undertakings and/or the size of the total fleet. Article 4(3) adds a second national power: a Member State may decide that a manager designated under paragraph 1 may not in addition be designated under paragraph 2, or may be so designated only for a smaller number of undertakings or a smaller fleet. Four and fifty are a Union ceiling, not an entitlement, and the figure an operator can actually plan around is the one in force where it is established.

Professional competence is an examination

Annex I, Part I lists eight subjects: civil law, commercial law, social law, fiscal law, business and financial management of the undertaking, access to the market, technical standards and technical aspects of operation, and road safety. Part II fixes the format. The compulsory written examination has two tests — written questions, and written exercises or case studies — each of at least two hours. An oral examination is optional. To pass, a candidate needs an average of at least 60 % of the total marks and not less than 50 % in any given test, which a Member State may reduce to 40 % in one test only. The certificate itself is specified down to the paper in Annexes II and III: at least two security features from a list including a hologram, fibres visible under UV light and a microprint line, on Pantone stout fawn 467, DIN A4 cellulose paper of 100 g/m² or more.

The document that travels with the vehicle

The authorisation stays with the undertaking; what travels is a licence issued under a separate instrument. For goods, Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 1072/2009 makes international carriage subject to possession of a Community licence and, if the driver is a national of a third country, a driver attestation as well — one of the entry rules examined in European truck driver supply. Article 4(2) issues the licence for renewable periods of up to 10 years, and Article 4(3) gives the holder the original plus certified true copies matching the number of vehicles at its disposal. Article 4(6) requires a certified true copy in each vehicle, produced on request; for a coupled combination the copy accompanies the motor vehicle and covers the combination even where the trailer is registered to somebody else. Where the lower financial thresholds were used, Article 4(4) has the issuing authority write “≤ 3,5 t” in the particular remarks section — a line worth reading on any document offered with a used vehicle, alongside the other papers discussed in buying a used truck.

Article 1(5) of that regulation exempted carriage of goods in vehicles whose permissible laden mass does not exceed 3.5 tonnes from the Community licence until 20 May 2022; from 21 May 2022 the exemption covers only vehicles up to 2.5 tonnes.

Coaches and buses are licensed under their own instrument, and it carries no weight threshold at all. Regulation (EC) No 1073/2009 stands in its consolidated version of 1 July 2013 and was not among the acts Regulation (EU) 2020/1055 amended. Its Article 4(1) makes all international carriage of passengers by coach and bus subject to possession of a Community licence issued by the Member State of establishment. Article 4(2) gives the holder the original, kept by the carrier, plus certified true copies corresponding to the number of vehicles used for the international carriage of passengers at its disposal — a narrower count than the goods rule, which matches every vehicle at the holder’s disposal. Article 4(3) requires a copy in each of the carrier’s vehicles, presented on request, and Article 4(4) issues the licence for renewable periods of up to 10 years. What the passenger instrument does not have is a driver attestation or a “≤ 3,5 t” remark: both belong to Regulation (EC) No 1072/2009 alone.

How the authorisation is kept and lost

Article 11(3) caps the examination of an application at three months from receipt of all necessary documents, extendable by one month in duly justified cases. Once the authorisation exists, it is Article 11(5) that governs updates: the undertaking notifies the competent authority of changes within a period of 28 days or less, as determined by the Member State of establishment. The 28 days is an outer bound rather than the deadline, and the national period may be shorter. What has to be notified is narrower than the register as a whole — it is the data recorded on authorisation under Article 11(2), which is points (a) to (d) of Article 16(2), not the nine-item list that register holds.

Monitoring afterwards is risk-weighted rather than periodic. Article 12(1) requires checks, including where appropriate on-site inspections at the premises, targeting undertakings classed as posing an increased risk; the risk rating system built under Article 9 of Directive 2006/22/EC is extended to cover all the infringements in Article 6. When a requirement fails, Article 13(1) sets the rectification periods: up to six months to recruit a replacement transport manager, extendable by three months on the death or physical incapacity of the previous one, up to six months to demonstrate an effective and stable establishment, and up to six months to restore financial standing.

All of it is written down. Article 16 obliges each Member State to keep a national electronic register of authorised undertakings, holding the name and legal form, the address of establishment, the transport managers, the type of authorisation and the number of vehicles it covers with the licence serial numbers, serious infringements from the last two years, persons declared unfit, the registration numbers of the vehicles at the undertaking’s disposal, the headcount on 31 December of the previous year, and the risk rating. The first four are publicly accessible. The European Commission’s ERRU system interconnects those registers across borders, and the Commission states it has been operational since 1 January 2013.