Export only makes sense if the car is going with you
Export is not a way of getting rid of a car. It is the step that moves a car from the Dutch register to a foreign one, so it exists as an option only if some other country is going to take it on. If you are leaving and the car is staying behind, a buyer who already lives here is the shorter road: they do the transfer, you keep the proof, and no foreign authority is involved at all. Our guide on what to weigh up before you go sets the two side by side.
Keeping the car is the other case, and then the Dutch paperwork is the easy half. The country you are moving to sets its own terms, which can run to tax, an inspection or changes to the car itself. The RDW is blunt about the order of events: find out what the destination wants before you take the car off the Dutch register.
The half of the job no Dutch office can answer
Whatever the destination, the Dutch side of an export runs the same way. The foreign side does not, and nobody here will tell you how it works. Put the questions to whichever body keeps the vehicle register in the new country, or to an official government site of that country, and get an answer on whether the car is acceptable at all.
Two warnings from the RDW are worth carrying into that conversation. The export certificate is not optional: the new country wants it along with the registration card. And if your car holds an individual approval certificate, issued for that one vehicle and not for the model, the approval is automatically valid only in the country that granted it. Somewhere else may accept it. Confirm that yourself before you commit to anything.
- Which papers the new authority wants alongside the Dutch export certificate
- Whether an inspection or a modification has to come first
- What you will be charged in tax or fees when you register the car there
- The deadline for registering it once you are in the country
- Whether a local insurer will cover the car while it still wears export plates
Registering the export, in person and with the car
There is no online route. You take the car to an RDW inspection station, to an RDW desk, or to an export company that holds RDW authorisation, and it has to be the car itself, not photographs of it. The RDW charges for the registration and publishes the current amount on rdw.nl. An export company sets its own fee, so ask before you drive over.
The plates come off on the day and stay off. Once the fee is paid, whoever is handling the appointment deregisters the car and gives you the documents described in the next section.
- Settle the destination country's requirements first, before anything is deregistered.
- Keep the insurance running and the APK valid if you want to drive the car to the appointment. Both have to hold right up to the moment of registration.
- Bring the car to an RDW desk, an RDW inspection station, or an export company with RDW authorisation.
- Show the registration card, the registration code and your identification. On an older paper registration that means part IB and the transfer certificate.
- Pay the fee and give up the number plates.
- Leave with the three export documents, listed in the next section.
- Declare the export to Customs if the car is heading outside the EU or EFTA.
Putting a company name on the export certificate takes more. The RDW asks for a signed and recent Chamber of Commerce extract, plus identity papers for whoever signs on the company's behalf.
The three documents and who asks for each
Take them in the order they will be asked for. The export certificate (uitvoerbewijsPart II of the registration documents, handed over when the export is registered. A foreign authority wants it together with the registration card.), part II of the registration documents, is the one the foreign authority wants. With it goes the registration card, handed back to you with one corner clipped off, or part IB on a car still running a paper registration.
The third document, the proof of transfer (vrijwaringsbewijsDated evidence that the car is off your name. An export produces one, either from the RDW or from the export company that handled it.), is of no interest to anyone abroad. It is what proves the car stopped being yours on that date, which is exactly why it belongs in a file you will still be able to find in a few years.
Making export plates and the 14 days they buy
The car leaves the appointment with nothing on the bumpers, and driving it away like that is not allowed. Export plates carry the number the car already had, black characters on white, and there are two ways to get a set. A certified plate maker will produce them, and wants to see the registration card or part IA. Or you make them yourself, which the RDW permits provided the characters will not rub away and stay legible when the weather turns.
They are good for 14 days on Dutch public roads. A passenger car wearing them still needs insurance and a valid APK for every one of those days. A motorbike, moped or scooter needs the insurance alone. Trailers, campers and anything else are dealt with on the RDW page about exporting a vehicle.
Do not cancel the insurance too early
The usual mistake is phoning the insurer first. Until the export registration is through, the car sits on the Dutch register in your name, and Dutch law requires third party cover (WA) on a registered car. Cancel a week before the appointment and you have a week of a registered, uninsured car, which is a fine waiting to happen.
After the registration, the RDW says the three obligations fall away together: insurance, APK and road tax (motorrijtuigenbelasting). None of that reaches your insurer by itself. Ending or changing the policy is your own task, and the RDW says so plainly. For money you have already paid ahead, see what happens to tax paid in advance. A car that is already abroad follows the route below.
When the car has already left the country
You do not have to drive it back. Send the RDW an export notification together with evidence that the car is outside the Netherlands, and the RDW works through it in 10 working days. Keep the insurance going until the RDW's confirmation letter reaches you, not from the day you sent the notification.
A refusal by the foreign authority leaves two openings, both of them described by the RDW. Someone in the Netherlands can act as your contact person and run the export from here, or that authority can request a declaration of no objection from the RDW itself.
Part of the BPM can come back
BPM is the tax charged when a car first enters the Dutch register, and the Belastingdienst can pay part of it back when a used car is exported. Whether your car qualifies, and for how much, is a question only the Belastingdienst answers, so read its page on the BPM refund before you treat the money as yours.
Its conditions are specific. The car must have been plated here on 16 October 2006 or later, it cannot be a damaged vehicle, and the RDW has to have given it the status Export. It also has to end up permanently registered in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway or an EU member state, with paperwork showing that happened within 13 weeks of the export status. Sequence matters: register the export with the RDW, then send the Belastingdienst its request form. Anything unclear about your own car is a question for them.
Selling to a buyer who lives in another country
A buyer without a Dutch address cannot put the car in their name here, so the sale and the export become one event. The RDW advises letting the buyer register the export in their own name, which puts their details on the export certificate. Do it the other way round, exporting first and handing over afterwards, and you stay answerable for the car until a foreign register picks it up.
Which is why the car and the documents stay with you until the export registration has gone through. The general rules for a handover are in our guide to the sale itself.