Will Ireland push the EU to scrap VAT on car imports from the UK

Any change to VAT rules on UK imports will be tied to any general trade agreements between the EU and UK, you're kidding yourself if you think there will be some kind of sweetheart deal for second hand cars.

Oh and just FYI, there are two other EU countries that drive on the left, typically in RHD cars

On an EU scale, we're tiny too and certainly not special

Thats nothing to do with what was outlined in the post tho. Cars have always been overpriced here due to VRT.

The 90k Golf is due to manufacturer price increases and VRT, not EU VAT rules

Not a snowballs chance in hell.

We are lucky that the car market is transitioning to EV as at least the Govt is currently subsidising the purchase of new EVs which should help a little to increase the used car supply down the road.

The car market is going through a periodical reset, thats all.

We've got 5.2 million people, we can easily sustain 250,000 new and used sales, if the value is there for people.

Good dealers are working to secure the stock and that good value, that's what they do. The bad ones are disappearing and thats no harm either.

The best thing the government can do, is GTF out of the way.

There was another thread about a week ago discussing the possibility of a VRT reduction on EVs and hybrids.

Could be a way to get an EV second hand market going.

It’s not just unlikely. It’s effectively impossible. Brexit has taken the UK not only out of the EU, but of all the broader associate memberships that many other non-EU countries have been part of, including the Customs Union some aspects of which even extend to countries like Turkey.

It also will potentially become easier to import RHD Japanese cars because of the EU-Japan trade agreement, which is implementing in phases.

The EU will have zero interest in complicated arrangements to facilitate one member state buying second hand cars from outside the single market and the customs union or any EU trade deal networks. It makes no sense and would undermine the very concept of the Union. They’ve already bent over backwards to try to facilitate Northern Ireland and have mostly been slapped in the face by the DUP and the Tories with all offers having been thrown back at them.

Also from the Irish exchequer’s point of view it’s a loss of revenue.

It’s also not really in the European car industry’s interest to have consumers in what is a pretty wealthy EU member state buying used cars form outside the EU. So I can’t see that lobby working overtime to get exemptions for it either.

I think a lot of people in the UK are forgetting that the EU’s raison d'être is to encourage trade with and between its members, not to facilitate the whims of 3rd countries. The whole philosophy of striving towards easy, barrier free, low cost trade and a level playing field only applies within the EU itself. There seems to be a lot of surprise that this doesn’t seem to include a former member that’s cut all ties and whose current government seems to imagine it should be able to position it as a giant off shore tax and regulatory haven ‘Singapore on Thames’ and so on, and be somehow granted privileged access to the EU market based on …

So basically, no - it makes no sense technically or fiscally and it makes no sense politically.

If people are that hot and bothered about car prices here, they need to start questioning the Irish political parties about VRT and domestic taxes and charges on new cars.

As you say VRT can be adjusted.

VRT is an Irish Government competency and can be changed without upsetting the EU.

So if the policy is to encourage the use of EVs why not reduce VRT on them to make it cheaper to bring them in from UK ?

I don't know the state of the EV market in UK though.