Use of EUCARIS:

Austria is making use of EUCARIS for the electronic exchange of vehicle registration data (VRD)

  • since 2008 for PRÜM VRD exchange, based on the Prüm Treaty (2005) resp. the EU Prüm Council Decisions (2008/615/JHA and 2008/616/JHA) for the purpose of the prevention and investigation of criminal offences, and
  • since 2014 for CBE VRD exchange, based on the CBE Directive (Directive 2015/413/EU, former Directive 2011/82/EU) for the purpose of cross-border enforcement of traffic offences.
  • since 2018/19 for VHOH VRD exchange with Switzerland for the purpose of cross-border enforcement of traffic fines, based on the Police Cooperation Agreement between Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein (2012); only asynchronous data exchange.
  • since 2019 for VHOH VRD exchange with GERMANY for the purpose of cross-border enforcement of traffic fines, based on a bilateral Treaty between Austria and Germany; this data exchange is additional to the CBE Directive and applies only to traffic offences which are not covered by the CBE Directive (Directive 2015/413/EU); only asynchronous data exchange.
  • since 2020 for VAT VRD exchange, based on Implementing Regulation (EU) No 79/2012 for the purpose of cross-border administrative cooperation and combating fraud in the field of value added tax (VAT) related to vehicles.

From February 2020 on Austria will start the new EUCARIS Salzburg CBE Service for the data exchange with Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary on CBE 2nd step procedures, based on the Salzburg Forum CBE Agreements (2012/15).

Austria is not (yet) party to the EUCARIS Treaty (2000) as such.

How to request Austrian licence plates under PRÜM, CBE, VHOH and VAT?

Please note that for the different types of Austrian number plates there is a different syntax to be respected when entering the registration number (= licence number) into EUCARIS (PRÜM, CBE, VHOH and VAT):

  1. For Austrian standard number plates (white background, black type; about 99% of Austrian vehicles) and also for number plates of e-vehicles (white background, green type)  the registration number has to be entered into EUCARIS with a dash/hyphen (“-“) replacing the heraldic emblem of the respective province, for instance k-510bv.
  2. When not using the dash/hyphen you will systematically receive an error message: in certain cases “105: Search input not correct” and in other cases – for reasons that are inherent to the Austrian registration system – the error message “101: No information found”.
  3. For old Austrian number plates (black background, white type, released before 1990) the registration number has to be entered into EUCARIS without dash/hyphen or dot, for example: w734115. When using the dash/hyphen you will systematically receive the error message: “101: No information found” (also in this case for reasons that are inherent to the Austrian registration system we cannot provide code 105 !).
  4. For your CBE requests to Austria, please only use the field “VehRegistrationNumberPart1Req” when providing an Austrian registration number (= licence number).

Note: Incoming CBE requests which are providing licence plate data in the field “VehRegistrationNumberPart2Req” will trigger an error message “105: Search input not correct”, since this type of search is critical to our national VRD register.

Contacts:

The Ministry of the Interior of Austria is the National EUCARIS Contact Point, responsible for the central vehicle registration database and hosting the National Contact Point PRÜM and the National Contact Points CBE and VHOH:

National EUCARIS Contact Point:

Ministry of the Interior of Austria
General Directorate of the Police
Department for Traffic Police
BMI-II-BPD-7-b@bmi.gv.at  (general contact)
BMI-IKT-EUCARIS@bmi.gv.at  (IT matters)

National Contact Point PRÜM:

Ministry of the Interior of Austria
General Directorate of the Police
Criminal Intelligence Service Austria – Sub department for Property Offences
BMI-II-BK-3-2@bmi.gv.at (general contact)
BMI-IKT-EUCARIS@bmi.gv.at    (IT matters)

National Contact Point CBE, VHOH and Salzburg CBE:

Ministry of the Interior of Austria
General Directorate of the Police
Department for Traffic Police
BMI-II-BPD-7-b@bmi.gv.at  (general contact)
BMI-IKT-EUCARIS@bmi.gv.at   (IT matters)

National Contact Point VAT:

Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance
Anti Fraud Unit I/9
Post.ABB-ZIZ-EUCARIS-VAT@bmf.gv.at  (general contact)
BMI-IKT-EUCARIS@bmi.gv.at   (IT matters)

National Contact Point TOLL:

Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology
General Directorate I
Unit K2 – Infrastructure and External Costs, Tolls
k2@bmk.gv.at (general contact)
BMI-IKT-EUCARIS@bmi.gv.at (IT matters)