Importing your car from UK to Greece

TheGrocer

The import of your car is always topical, and on reading the forums seems to change almost daily. So to give you the latest info I finished the process and received my Greek plates today 30th Sept.
The whole process in Greece cost me 386 Euro, including the work of the importer I used but excluding the annual road tax.
For those interested the procedure I followed was:-
Greek Embassy in Holland Park, London presented them with:-
UK documents
- Council tax bills for the last 3 years
- Electricity, water bills for the last 3 years
- P45 & P60's for last three years
- UK Passport
- UK driving licence
- V5 for the car I intend to import into Greece
Note: you must have owned this car for a minimum of 6 months
The paperwork was completed and posted to me within the week.

Get an import / export expert to prepare the paperwork.....this cost me 200 Euros, you just can not do this yourself…….even if you can read Greek and understand the forms….
They will require all the documents from the Greek Embassy and
- Deeds of purchase of your Greek plot of land or house
- Greek tax number document
- Greek address details

You have to within 30 days (very important) present this to Greek Customs (on this definitely do it within 20 days as time is critical), the importer will do all this for you but you have to be present.
Providing you meet these criteria there is NO import duty to pay. I paid Customs 61 Euro...including the 31 Euro to the man who looked under the bonnet and showed the Customs Officer where the VIN Plate was !!!!!! (Jobs for the boys)
Then off to the ministry for vehicles with the Customs papers (technical dept) to obtain more paper.
They then issue even more paper....which you take to KTEO for the (MOT) test of compliance. Cost here 50 Euro.

Back to the ministry with this document, more paper issued and 75 Euro paid for the plates. (This you have to pay direct in a bank to their account (Millennium Bank)).
The office will then issue the green vehicle "log book" which has to be taken to the tax office and the year’s road tax paid. Returning this proof of payment to the ministry office I got my Red Plates !!!!
The time all this took was painful, 4 hours two days running in customs and each visit to other offices about an hour a piece. Fantastic service at KTEO though. Was it worth it……..yes, my car in the UK would be worth 4500 pounds. Here the same aged vehicle would cost me 8000 Euro.

I can not guarantee all locations in Greece will be the same, but I found by being patient, putting up with the frustrating length of time things took to be checked and double checked in good humour pays off…..every one I came across were helpful. (Just take a good book to read whilst you wait)

piglet

Hi Grocer and welcome to the Greece Forum.
What part of Greece have you moved to?

Your information on importing cars is an excellent post. Thankyou for sharing your research Cool

we would also be interested in any other information you may have that you feel would be of interest to people , looking to make the move to Greece.

Many thanks
Piglet

TheGrocer

Good morning Piglet...

Moved to village near Messini in Peloponnese, thanks for your comments.

As an addition to the car import saga, I also imported a caravan again with no real problems in customs and no taxes had to be paid. But still had to pay the 31 euro for the man with a torch to check the chassis number !!!!
The same format took place with all the papers first being obtained from the Greek Embassy in London. The downside of a caravan here in Greece is that you have to pay road tax of 92 euro's. So whilst I have it imported I have decided not to "plate it" until next January, as I would have course suffered the full 92 euro for just a couple of months this year and got virtually no use out of it. Next year we will use our base here in Messinias and tour.....but knowing greek roads I think I'll plan my journeys very carefully and not rely on SatNav's.....