French Transport Register: The Four Requirements and the Licences

A French road transport company cannot simply be registered with the commercial register. To carry goods or passengers for hire or reward, it must be entered in the national electronic register of road transport undertakings — an entry conditional on four requirements, then completed by operating licences to be carried on board every vehicle. Here is the full path.

Where this framework comes from

Road transport for hire or reward is a regulated profession at EU level. Regulation (EC) No 1071/2009 establishes common rules on the conditions for pursuing the occupation of road transport operator; it is transposed into French law in the transport code and detailed by decree no. 2011-2045 of 28 December 2011, which provided for each transport undertaking to be entered in a national electronic register.

The aim is clear: since the market is open to European competition, every operator must meet a common baseline. Without it, competition would take place on compliance with social and safety rules. That is precisely what research documents: in her 2008 study “Unintended effects of deregulation in the European Union: The case of road freight transport”, Nadia Hilal analyses the unintended effects of European road freight liberalisation on drivers’ working conditions (see the study).

Requirement 1: establishment

The company must have an establishment in France constituting its registered office — or, for a foreign company, its principal establishment. That establishment must be real: premises where the company’s documents are kept, not a mere mailbox address.

This is the point that distinguishes an established undertaking from a letterbox company, a recurring concern of the European legislator since the cabotage debates.

Requirement 2: good repute

Good repute is assessed both for the company and for the transport manager, the natural person who effectively runs the transport activity. It is examined in the light of certain criminal convictions and breaches of transport, employment or road-safety rules.

This requirement is not acquired once and for all: it can be lost, and its loss can lead to removal from the register.

Requirement 3: financial standing

The company must have the financial resources needed to start up and run the business properly. The amount is calculated per vehicle. For road haulage:

Vehicle category	First vehicle	Each subsequent vehicle
Maximum authorised weight ≤ 3.5 t	€1,800	€900
Maximum authorised weight > 3.5 t	€9,000	€5,000

Where the company operates vehicles in both categories, the requirement is the sum of the two amounts.

The condition is met when equity covers the full amount required, or when equity and guarantees — bank guarantees, insurance — cover it together, provided the guarantees do not represent more than half the total. In other words, a guarantee never fully replaces own funds.

This mechanism is often the real brake on a young haulier’s growth: every extra vehicle ties up more equity.

Requirement 4: professional competence

The fourth requirement is met when the person designated as transport manager holds the certificate of professional competence matching the company’s activity as stated in its objects clause.

Three certificates exist by occupation — freight, passengers, freight forwarding — and two regimes by vehicle, heavy or light. We set out the routes in our article on the three routes to the French road haulage CPC, and the boundary between regimes in our article on choosing between light and heavy road transport.

One little-known caveat: where a person has not taken part in running a company’s transport activity for an extended period after their certificate was issued, the regional prefect may require them to complete refresher training before being designated transport manager. An old, never-exercised certificate is therefore not automatically reusable — worth checking with the DREAL before planning a business takeover.

Entry in the register

The file is filed with the territorially competent DREAL (DRIEAT in the Paris region, DEAL overseas). It examines the four requirements together and grants the registration.

Plan for consistency across the documents: the company’s objects clause, the transport manager’s certificate and the declared vehicles must describe the same activity. An inconsistency between the company extract and the certificate is a classic cause of incomplete files.

Operating licences and certified copies

Registration opens the way to operating licences. In road haulage, two coexist:

• the Community licence, required for transport with vehicles above 3.5 tonnes and, since 21 May 2022 under the EU Mobility Package, for international transport with vehicles above 2.5 tonnes and up to 3.5 tonnes;
• the national transport licence, for domestic transport with vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes.

Alongside the licence come numbered certified copies: one per vehicle operated, to be carried on board and produced at any roadside check. Their number depends both on the vehicles the company has at its disposal and on its financial standing.

This is where the requirements meet most concretely: without sufficient own funds, no extra copy — and therefore no extra vehicle, whatever the commercial demand.

This entry control and on-board traceability are not administrative formalities. The literature review by Tor-Olav Nævestad, Torkel Bjørnskau, Inger Beate Hovi and Ross Owen Phillips, “Safety outcomes of internationalization of domestic road haulage”, published in 2014 in Transport Reviews, examines the safety issues raised by opening domestic haulage to foreign operators (see the study). The register and the licence copies are the concrete instrument by which the State knows who operates on its network.

After registration: what is monitored

Registration is not final. The four requirements must be maintained throughout the company’s life:

• financial standing is reassessed on the basis of the annual accounts;
• good repute can be called into question by convictions or serious breaches;
• the transport manager’s departure must be declared, and the company has a limited period to replace them;
• any change of establishment, director or activity must be declared to the DREAL.

Treat the register file as a living file, not as a one-off formality at incorporation.

Take action

Go through the four requirements one by one and assign each a concrete piece of evidence: lease or occupancy title for establishment, criminal record extract for good repute, accounts or guarantee certificate for financial standing, the certificate itself for professional competence. Our full profile of the French road transport certificate of professional competence details each step and the order in which to take them.