Registering a car in another Member State should be an easy procedure which quite often turns into a bureaucratic nightmare, with cumbersome re-registration formalities and paperwork. In order to facilitate this procedure, the European Commission has launched a public consultation aiming to identify the main difficulties encountered by EU citizens and companies when moving a car bought and registered in one Member State to another. The results of this consultation will feed into actions  to remove one more barrier within the single market.

EU citizens continue to encounter problems when purchasing a car in a Member State and transferring it permanently to a different Member State. Having to provide information which was already submitted during the previous registration of the vehicle creates considerable paperwork and unnecessary expenses. In order to tackle this situation, the European Commission aims to simplify car registration procedures within the single market.

As part of the strategic initiative to re-launch the single market, which is an essential element of the Europe 2020 Strategy, the European Commission aims to simplify the formalities and conditions for the registration of cars previously registered in another Member State. This initiative is also one of the actions set out in the EU Citizenship Report 2010 which complements the Single Market Act of 2010.

These measures will benefit those who are most affected by current rules, such as citizens willing to  transfer their motor vehicle already registered in one Member State to another, vehicle-owning companies using vehicles in one Member State which have been registered in other Member States, companies selling second-hand motor vehicles in other Member States, as well as leasing and car-rental companies.

All these social groups as well as any other interested parties are therefore invited to take part in the on-line questionnaire on car registration. This public consultation will be open until 26 May 2011 and its results will be the base for future Commission's actions to tackle this problem which, according to Europe’s online tool for detecting and solving problems related to the single market SOLVIT, represents 5% of all reported cases.