Buyer's guide/Registration
The fee is €150 and it is the same for every car on the island. Almost everything else you have read about this comes, one way or another, from a mistranslation on the Road Transport Department's own website.
€150, flat, fixed by statute. But if the car came from Japan or the UK, you cannot file the registration yourself. The Department's own English says it must be done online by an authorised importer.
Registration is the step people think about least and misunderstand most. It sits at the end of the journey, after the money and the shipping and the customs, and it feels like a formality: pay a fee, get a plate.
The fee really is simple. What is around it is not, and the reason is unusual. The Department publishes almost nothing about this in English, and the little it does publish contains an error that the rest of the internet has faithfully copied for years. So let us go to the Greek and to the forms themselves.
Written into the law, in words and figures:
for the registration of a vehicle a registration fee amounting to one hundred and fifty Euro (€150) shall be collected by the Registrar
Flat. The same €150 for a Kei car and a Land Cruiser. It does not scale with CO2, engine size, age or value, and no amendment since has changed it.
If that seems too simple given what you have been quoted, that is because three different authorities take money and only two of them are the Department:
| Who | What | How much |
|---|---|---|
| Customs | Import duty + VAT | Scales with the car. See the import tax guide |
| Road Transport | Registration fee | €150, flat |
| Road Transport | First road tax licence | CO2-based. See the road tax guide |
Source: Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Law 86/1972, Annex I, Part I, para 1(a). Amendment history runs to 90(I)/2023.
Most guides blur those three into one figure and call it "registration". They are three separate bills from two separate ministries, and only the middle one is fixed.
One detail worth knowing: the first road tax licence is issued at registration, not later, and it runs only to the next June or December. So your first licence is a part-year one, priced on your car's CO2 and on the month you register. There is no flat first-licence fee to quote you.
This is the fact that matters most and the one nobody tells a buyer, because it only becomes visible at the very end.
The Department's own English translation, on its official Single Digital Gateway page:
A used category M1 vehicle from a third country must be registered online by an authorised importer.
The Greek says the same: the application is made online, by approved importers. And the eService that does it describes its own audience plainly: it "concerns companies, which import and sell motor vehicles", and access is granted "upon written request to the Road Transport Department".
Three official statements, two languages, one conclusion: the filing channel is a system for companies, and a private person is not in it. Not because it is forbidden to own the car. Because the door you file through is not a door you have keys to.
We are not going to tell you it is illegal to register your own import, because the Department does not say that. What it says is that the procedure runs through an approved importer. And here is the honest part: the Department publishes no definition of an approved importer, no register of them, and no criteria for becoming one beyond "written request". We looked. If someone tells you confidently how to become one, ask them where they read it.
You will be told your imported car needs an "emissions test certificate", form ΤΟΜ 119. You will read it on expat sites, on shipping companies' pages, and in every guide to importing a car to Cyprus.
It is wrong, and we can show you exactly where it came from.
Here is what the form actually says, in a warning box, in capitals, on the form itself:
ATTENTION: THIS CERTIFICATE IS ISSUED ONLY FOR THE PURPOSES OF TAXATION AND DETERMINING ROAD TAX IN THE REPUBLIC OF CYPRUS AND CANNOT BE USED FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE.
Its real title is a certificate of the mass of carbon dioxide emitted, combined cycle, for a used M1 vehicle registered for the first time in Cyprus. Nothing is measured. Nobody puts a probe in your exhaust. It records the manufacturer's CO2 figure so that the Department can price your road tax, because road tax here is CO2-based. That is its entire function, and the form says so.
So where did "emissions test" come from? From the Road Transport Department. Its own English page translates the line that way. Everyone downstream copied the Department, reasonably enough, and nobody went and read the form.
Practically, this matters: it is not a test, so it cannot be failed. It is issued by a ΚΕΜΟ, which is the Department itself, not a private test centre, and you apply for it on form 118.
The second thing that gets conflated. SVA is Single Vehicle Approval, and it exists for a specific reason: a car built for the Japanese or British market has no EU certificate of conformity. Type approval is what says "this model is legal here", and your model never got one. So the car is approved individually, against the applicable directives, instead.
The MOT is a different question entirely. It asks whether this particular car is in a fit condition today. SVA asks whether this design is allowed at all.
They are separate: the Department's own EU-import document list requires a roadworthiness certificate at item 4 and SVA at item 8. Two items, one list.
Worth saying plainly, because people assume otherwise. A left-hand drive car can be registered in Cyprus. It needs SVA approval on form ΤΟΜ 139Β. That is an extra piece of paper, not a prohibition.
This section exists because we would rather tell you what we do not know than pretend. We went looking for all of the following in the statute, on the Department's site, and on gov.cy. None of it is published anywhere official:
So when a page confidently tells you registration takes eleven days and SVA costs a specific sum, understand what you are reading: somebody's experience, or somebody's guess, presented as a rule. It might even be accurate. It is just not sourced, and there is nothing to check it against.
The one thing we can honestly give you is our own number, and we will label it as ours: a car we buy at auction in Japan is on Cyprus plates and in your hands in 8 to 12 weeks, the whole way. That is our operational average, not a rule, and not something we can promise on your behalf if you do it yourself.
For a third-country car, the Department does not list the documents at all. It cross-refers you to another case. In Greek that line points at "authorised facilities"; in its own English translation the same line says "authorised dealers". Those are not the same thing, and we are not going to smooth it over for them. Where the source is ambiguous, we say so.
The registration fee is €150, flat, fixed by statute. It is the same for a Kei car and a Land Cruiser, and it does not vary with CO2, engine size, age or value. It is also not the whole bill: customs duty and VAT are a different authority, and the first road tax licence is issued at registration and priced on the car's CO2.
The Road Transport Department's own English says a used category M1 vehicle from a third country must be registered online by an authorised importer, and it grants access to that system to companies that import and sell vehicles, on written request. So the filing channel is not open to a private individual. What the Department does not publish is any definition of an approved importer, any register of them, or any criteria to become one.
No, they are two different things and an EU import needs both. SVA is Single Vehicle Approval, a type-approval route: a Japanese or British car has no EU certificate of conformity, so it is approved individually against the directives instead. The MOT is a condition test on a car that is already approved.
No, and this is the most copied error about Cyprus registration. The form itself carries a warning box saying it is issued for taxation and road tax purposes only and cannot be used for anything else. Nothing is measured at a tailpipe. It records the manufacturer's combined-cycle CO2 figure so the Department can price your road tax. The Department's own English page calls it an emissions test certificate, which is where everyone else got it wrong.
Yes. It is not banned. It needs SVA approval on form ΤΟΜ 139Β, which is an extra document rather than a wall.
There is no official answer. We looked for one and the Road Transport Department does not publish a timeline of any kind, so anybody quoting you a number is quoting their own experience rather than a rule. Ours is that the car is on plates within our normal 8 to 12 week Japan window, which includes everything from auction to handover.
No. The Department's registration document list has nothing in it about the person at all. It is entirely about the vehicle. Insurance is what is required, not a licence.
We bring cars from Japan and the UK and hand them over on Cyprus plates, in your name. The approvals, the forms and the Greek are our problem. Tell us what you are looking for.
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