If you are a bus, coach or truck driver and your driving licence, qualification certificate or driver card expired during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, you will be relieved to learn that some of the renewal deadlines have been extended. As were the deadlines for the completion of the driver periodic training, and the replacement of stolen, lost or damaged driver cards.
The limits for the completion of the periodic training, the validity of Code 95 and the validity of the driver qualification cards expiring between 1 February – 31 August 2020 have all been extended by 7 months. The same applies to driving licences.
If your driver card expires, is damaged, lost or stolen between 1 March – 31 August 2020, the card-issuing authority of your respective country will have maximum 2 months to replace it. Meanwhile, you will have to record your activities manually.
However, not all EU Member States will implement these extensions as some will want to keep the normal deadlines. Additionally, Member States can apply for further extensions to those mentioned above, but only if they consider that the latter remain impracticable beyond 31 August 2020, due to COVID-19 related measures. To find out more about your particular case, you will have to inquire with the competent authorities of your respective country.
The European Commission provides regular updates on the deadline extensions Member States have or have not decided to apply. For further details, you may check regularly here.
Additional temporary extensions were adopted for community licenses, driver attestations, and other key documents for road transport activities, but these only concern transport operators.
The EU regulation is available in all EU official languages here.
An ETF table summarising all extensions applicable to road transport can be downloaded here or at your right.
