NCT changes from 20th May 2018 - EU Directive 2014/45/EU - experiences so far

mad-for-tar

Hi all, did a bit of a search here and found nothing specific except for reference to it in another thread here on a different topic in relation to MOT in the UK.

As of 20th May, changes to the NCT are due to be implemented as per this statutory instrument in the Irish statute book.
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2017/si/415/made/en or a pdf version of it here http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2017/si/415/made/en/pdf

Had been keeping an eye on RSA website and surprise surprise, some info was added to their NCT page only during the latter days of last week on it.
http://rsa.ie/en/RSA/Your-Vehicle/Your-Vehicle-/NCT/

The CVRT here seems to have done a better job of promoting awareness on it and it has been good knowledge in the UK for the MOT it seems for the last 6 months or so.

So, question is, has anyone had any experiences so far since Sunday (when the new rules came into effect) or has it been hit and miss so far in NCT centres around the country? Had asked an employee when I was in recently getting a VRT done and he had no knowledge of the changes and nothing posted anywhere in this particular NCT centre.

Interested to hear any feedback so far!

colm_mcm

What are the changes?

mgbgt1978

Basically, a UK MOT (or any EU Test) will be recognised here insofar as you can have it changed to an NCT Cert with the same Expiry Date.
And the new Vintage NCT Regs came into force.

colm_mcm

I guess insurance companies won’t recognise anything other than an NCT?

CiniO

colm_mcm wrote: »

I guess insurance companies won’t recognise anything other than an NCT?

But it will be original nct cert.
Just not based on actual test but based on foreign test cert.

I'd say about bloody time.
It was illegal under eu law for years for nct not to recognise valid foreign roadworthiness tests on imported vehicles.

tcawley29

What used to happen before?

Did you just have to bin the MOT cert and start with a fresh NCT cert?

If so then fair play to all involved in making this new decision

colm_mcm

CiniO wrote: »

But it will be original nct cert.
Just not based on actual test but based on foreign test cert.

I'd say about bloody time.
It was illegal under eu law for years for nct not to recognise valid foreign roadworthiness tests on imported vehicles.

Ah it’ll be a swap.

Atlantic Dawn

tcawley29 wrote: »

What used to happen before?

Did you just have to bin the MOT cert and start with a fresh NCT cert?

If so then fair play to all involved in making this new decision

Before it had no meaning whatsoever here, you had to NCT it straight away once it was 4 years old regardless if it has passed the MOT the day before.

tcawley29

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Before it had no meaning whatsoever here, you had to NCT it straight away once it was 4 years old regardless if it has passed the MOT the day before.

So it was a good call. Fair play to whoever came up with the idea to do this.

Del2005

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Before it had no meaning whatsoever here, you had to NCT it straight away once it was 4 years old regardless if it has passed the MOT the day before.

Since a vehicle can be made unroadworthy driving out of the test center I don't think that making vehicles which are going to be permanently on our roads undergo a road worthiness test when registering a problem, especially with the known issues with the MOT.

mickdw

Ya sounds like a new avenue for write offs from the UK getting on the road here.
Poorly repaired car in UK gets a real mot cert but from a dodgy mot centre - of which there are many. Car arrives in Ireland, gets a nice nct cert without inspection and is sold on to unsuspecting buyer.

mickdw

Or even heavily damaged car could possibly use mot cert from before damage to get an nct cert here for a car that has been botched back together.

Robbo

CiniO wrote: »

It was illegal under eu law for years for nct not to recognise valid foreign roadworthiness tests on imported vehicles.

Care to point us to a judgment of the CJEU on that matter?

That the EU itself has seen fit to legislate by way of a Directive implies that there's been no pressing need. The recitals to the Directive also point to a slow converging of standards rather than emergency legislation to cure some defect that offends the Treaties.

CiniO

Robbo wrote: »

Care to point us to a judgment of the CJEU on that matter?

.

There has been no judgement against Ireland and it's sick practice of not accepting foreign roadworthiness test certs on imported cars, as probably no one ever lodged a complaint to Eu court of justice.

There has been however judgements on exact same issue in other countries which did the same practice as Ireland and refused to accept foreign roadworthiness certs, and someone was bothered enough to lodge a complain about it.

Del2005

CiniO wrote: »

There has been no judgement against Ireland and it's sick practice of not accepting foreign roadworthiness test certs on imported cars, as probably no one ever lodged a complaint to Eu court of justice.

There has been however judgements on exact same issue in other countries which did the same practice as Ireland and refused to accept foreign roadworthiness certs, and someone was bothered enough to lodge a complain about it.

So it's sick for a country to ensure that the vehicles on its roads are safe when first registered here. I think its entirely sensible to make sure that they are safe at least when they are registered and that means that they need an NCT to prove that they are safe.

Atlantic Dawn

mickdw wrote: »

Ya sounds like a new avenue for write offs from the UK getting on the road here.
Poorly repaired car in UK gets a real mot cert but from a dodgy mot centre - of which there are many. Car arrives in Ireland, gets a nice nct cert without inspection and is sold on to unsuspecting buyer.

Yes the lack of a central body in the UK responsible for testing leaves it open to abuse. Perhaps some marking on the NCT disc to indicate it's a transferred over MOT would help.

NBar

Sure this Brexit ****e might change it back again

grogi

Del2005 wrote: »

So it's sick for a country to ensure that the vehicles on its roads are safe when first registered here. I think its entirely sensible to make sure that they are safe at least when they are registered and that means that they need an NCT to prove that they are safe.

No, it is not to ensure roadworthyness. Burdensome bureaucracy is however.

Del2005

grogi wrote: »

No, it is not to ensure roadworthyness. Burdensome bureaucracy is however.

But roadworthiness test only means that it was roadworthy at the time of the test. I see nothing wrong with a country insisting that a vehicle which is going to be registered in the country passing its roadworthiness test when first registering. Even our NCT setup to avoid corruption has it, other countries have worse issues with their testing regimes.

demanufactured

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Yes the lack of a central body in the UK responsible for testing leaves it open to abuse. Perhaps some marking on the NCT disc to indicate it's a transferred over MOT would help.

VOSA.

Guy:Incognito

grogi wrote: »

No, it is not to ensure roadworthyness. Burdensome bureaucracy is however.

How often is it drummed in to posters here, pretty unanimously, to run proper checks on the cars they are buying?

But a 50 quid roadworthiness test is a bad thing?

Any dodgy dealer in the UK has a friendly mot test centre to buy a cert for any old heap of **** they want. Bonus points if it's leaving the country.

Philb76

In the North wer they have testing centres like our nct might be a bit more reassuring i know that a lot of testers wer sacked for the old 100quid under the seat but for English cars this is music to the ears for dodgy and just knock out the odd motor ere and now brigade

supervento

mgbgt1978 wrote: »

Basically, a UK MOT (or any EU Test) will be recognised here insofar as you can have it changed to an NCT Cert with the same Expiry Date.
And the new Vintage NCT Regs came into force.

does anyone know how to go about this? do u call into the nct place after clearing the car or.....?

GM228

Robbo wrote: »

CiniO wrote: »

But it will be original nct cert.
Just not based on actual test but based on foreign test cert.

I'd say about bloody time.
It was illegal under eu law for years for nct not to recognise valid foreign roadworthiness tests on imported vehicles.

Care to point us to a judgment of the CJEU on that matter?

That the EU itself has seen fit to legislate by way of a Directive implies that there's been no pressing need. The recitals to the Directive also point to a slow converging of standards rather than emergency legislation to cure some defect that offends the Treaties.

There has been four judgements on the issue that I can think of off the top of my head.

CiniO wrote: »

There has been no judgement against Ireland and it's sick practice of not accepting foreign roadworthiness test certs on imported cars, as probably no one ever lodged a complaint to Eu court of justice.

There has been however judgements on exact same issue in other countries which did the same practice as Ireland and refused to accept foreign roadworthiness certs, and someone was bothered enough to lodge a complain about it.

The ECJ, Case C-55/93, Johannes Gerrit Cornelis van Schaik vs Hoge Raad der Nederlanden, ECJ, Case C-297/05, Commission of the EC vs Netherlands, ECJ, Case C-170/07, Commission of the EC vs Poland and the ECJ, Case C-150/11, European Commission vs Kingdom of Belgium cases have all dealt with the matter.

Ireland was actually a party to the first case C-55/93 (despite being 7 years before testing was actually introduced in Ireland). The court held at the time that despite a provision for recognition in the directive there was no recognition of roadworthiness certificates from other member states as testing had a territorial limitation:-

Case C-55/93 wrote:

That view is moreover the one which underlies in Directive 77/143, which is based on the premiss that a Member State can only undertake direct supervision of testing establishments which are situated on its own territory. Article 1 of the directive provides that "in each Member State, motor vehicles registered in that State ... shall undergo periodic roadworthiness tests ...". Article 4 of the directive further provides that the roadworthiness tests, within the meaning of the directive, are to be carried out by the State or by bodies or establishments designated and directly supervised by the State. Thus the directive imposes a territorial limitation on periodic testing.

This ruling was in spite of Article 5 of Directive 77/142/EEC (which was the appropriate directive at the time) stating:-

Directive 77/142/EEC wrote:

Article 5
Each Member State shall, on the same basis as if it had itself issued the proof, recognize the proof issued in another Member State to the effect that a motor vehicle registered in that other State, together with its trailer or semi-trailer, have passed a roadworthiness test complying with at least the provisions of this Directive

When roadworthiness testing was actually introduced in Ireland in 2000 it was under the conditions of Directive 96/96/EC which repealed the 1977 directive. The 1996 directive has a similar provision as to that of the 1977 directive as follows:-

Directive 96/96/EC wrote:

Article 3
Each Member State shall, on the same basis as if it had itself issued the proof, recognize the proof issued in another Member State showing that a motor vehicle registered on the territory of that other State, together with its trailer or semi-trailer, have passed a roadworthiness test complying with at least the provisions of this Directive.

The 1996 directive was then replaced by Directive 2009/40/EC which had a similar provision again as follows:-

Directive 2009/40/EC wrote:

Article 3
Each Member State shall, on the same basis as if it had itself issued the proof, recognise the proof issued in another Member State showing that a motor vehicle registered on the territory of that other State, together with its trailer or semi-trailer, has passed a roadworthiness test complying with at least the provisions of this Directive.

Now don't they all look near identical?

As the C-55/93 case specifically dealt with the provisions of the 1977 directive there was some ambiguity as to whether it still applied after the 1977 directive was repealed, but we then had the later cases where the ECJ found that failure to recognise a roadworthiness certificate from another member state was specifically a breach of Article 34 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) as it was a hindrance on free movement of goods as opposed to the provisions of the appropriate directives.

The 2011 Commission Staff Working Paper on the matter summed up the situation well:-

Working Paper wrote:

The low level and scope of the European standards results in a heterogenous transposition of Directive 2009/40/EC into national legislations. As a result, some Member States refuse to fully honour Article 3 of the Directive which stipulates that "each Member State shall, on the same basis as if it had itself issued the proof, recognise the proof issued in another Member State showing that a motor vehicle registered on the territory of that other Member State, together with its trailer or semi-trailer, has passed a roadworthiness test complying with at least the provisions of this Directive". This provision has been in place in the PTI legislation since Directive 77/143/EEC. Despite this fact, Member States often refuse to recognise the certificates issued by other Member States for re-registration purposes and require a new test to be performed according to national rules before re-registration can take place. The European Court of Justice has stated at many occasions on the illegal character of such practices (the last time in case C-170/07 Commissions vs. Republic of Poland), but the problem has not so far been entirely resolved.

They noted that despite the requirements of the directives that mutual recognition was currently only done by way of bilateral agreements (which at the time were between the Netherlands and Belgium, between the Netherlands and Spain and between Spain and Sweden).

The paper recommended new specific rules requiring member states to recognise roadwordiness certificates issued in other member states and so we got Directive 2014/45/EU, which as transposed by the 2017 Regulations has finally got the requirements into legislation (in Ireland at least).

GM228

supervento wrote: »

does anyone know how to go about this? do u call into the nct place after clearing the car or.....?

You send an application and payment of €15.50 to the NCTS (or to the RSA and no fee for CVRT certificates) via the post.

The one problem I see here is the requirement for the original certificate to be included (no copies) and any issues which may arise if lost in the post.

Newly issued recognised NCT or CVRT certificates will be slightly different to existing ones in that they will not record mileage.

ryan_2011

Do anyone have a copy of the NCT application form?

From the NCT's FAQ site, we need to fill out a Mutual Recognition Application Form, however, the link isn't working and is only giving a 404 error message.

I was in my local NCT centre and they said they don't have the form, as it's Dublin that is dealing with everything and they said to just download it from the NCT site.

RootX

Works fine here, https://www.ncts.ie/media/1022/mutual_recognition_application_form.pdf

but I've attached it anyway.