What is a car’s Certificate of Conformity for?
It links your individual vehicle to the EC type-approval the manufacturer obtained for that vehicle type. In practice it gives the authority the technical data that fills in the registration certificate: power, CO₂ emissions, masses, number of seats, type-variant-version and approval number.
Without it, the authority cannot connect your car to an approved type and falls back on an individual approval — a longer, more expensive procedure that usually requires presenting the vehicle.
When is it required?
A COC is required to register a vehicle imported from another country whenever the foreign registration document is not enough. That is almost always the case in three situations:
- the foreign document does not show the European approval number (field K) or the type-variant-version (field D.2);
- the vehicle comes from outside the European Union (United Kingdom since Brexit, Switzerland, Norway);
- the vehicle is new or has never been registered.
Conversely, a complete German, Belgian or Dutch registration document often carries those fields, and the file can go through without a COC. We would rather tell you than sell you a document you do not need.
Which cars are covered?
Category M1 covers vehicles designed to carry passengers with no more than eight seats besides the driver: city cars, saloons, estates, SUVs, MPVs, coupés and convertibles, whether combustion, hybrid or electric.
We cover 46 makes, from volume manufacturers to premium brands and the new electric entrants. Vehicles built for the American or Japanese market have no European approval: the VIN check detects that before you order.
How do you obtain your car’s COC?
Three pieces of information are enough: the make, the VIN (17 characters, field E of the registration document) and the country where you intend to register. We file the request with the manufacturer’s type-approval department, then send you the digital copy as soon as it arrives, and the paper original if you chose it.
The lead time depends entirely on the manufacturer: some answer within a few working days, others take several weeks. The lead time shown before payment is the one we actually observe, not a flattering average.