Driver attestation for third country drivers in Croatia

For international carriage of goods a haulier must hold a Community licence, and where the driver is not a national of a member state, a driver attestation as well. That is the rule in Regulation (EC) No 1072/2009. In Croatia both documents are issued by the Ministry of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure. The attestation is issued to the carrier, not to the driver, and it is valid only for that carrier.

Where the duty comes from and what it covers

The driver attestation was introduced by Regulation (EC) No 484/2002, applicable from 1 March 2002, and carried over into Regulation (EC) No 1072/2009, which now governs access to the international road haulage market. Under article 1 of that Regulation it covers international carriage of goods within the Union, cabotage, meaning carriage inside one member state by a haulier established in another, and the Union leg of a journey run between a member state and a third country.

The purpose is stated plainly. In its fact sheet 127 on international and cabotage road transport, the European Parliament describes the measure as preventing irregular employment of drivers from third countries and the distortion of competition that follows. Before the attestation a haulier could put a driver behind the wheel with no proof that he was properly employed and insured, and the freight rate rested on the contributions never paid.

The practical consequence for an employer is that the attestation does not travel with the driver. If the driver moves to another haulier, the new employer files a fresh application and the old attestation is returned. A certified copy of the attestation is kept in the vehicle on international journeys and shown to enforcement officers with a certified copy of the Community licence.

Union code 95 and the initial qualification

The attestation settles the market question, not the competence question. Croatia's Road Transport Act (NN 41/18, as amended) requires a driver employed by a company or sole trader established in a member state to prove an initial qualification and periodic training. That proof is carried as a certificate bearing Union code 95, entered against the vehicle category.

A driver arriving from Nepal, India or the Philippines with a national driving licence goes through two separate checks. The first is recognition or exchange of the driving licence, decided by the Ministry of the Interior and dependent on the issuing country. The second is obtaining the code 95 qualification through a programme taken in Croatia. Neither replaces the stay and work permit, which is the precondition for everything else and is set out in the post on work permits for Nepali workers.

The sequence that saves weeks

Hauliers usually lose time by starting everything at once. The order is fixed: the Community licence for the company first, then the stay and work permit for the driver, then the driver attestation, which is applied for in respect of a named driver at that carrier, with licence recognition and the code 95 programme running alongside. The attestation is filed only once the driver is lawfully employed and registered, because that is precisely what it certifies. An application filed before the registration comes back.

The second common error concerns scope. The attestation is tied to the carrier, so where a group holds two legal entities with two Community licences, a driver who occasionally drives for the sister company needs an attestation of its own. The employer side of the permit file, including the positive opinion from the Croatian Employment Service, is described in the post on employer conditions and the HZZ opinion. Heavy goods drivers appear on the shortage occupation lists of several police administrations, which shortens part of the permit procedure, as listed in the post on the shortage occupation list by police administration.

A haulier who puts all four documents on one list before the first third country driver, and names who files each of them, avoids the only expensive version of this procedure, the one where a truck stands in the yard because the document that should have been second in line is missing. Our work with hauliers and other destination employers is described on the employers page.