Driving licence exchange in Greece for third country drivers and the CPC

A Greek driving licence does not follow the worker. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport exchanges a foreign licence without tests for six countries only, where a reciprocal arrangement exists: the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Africa and South Korea. A driver from Nepal, India or the Philippines sits the Greek theory and practical exams, and the professional competence certificate is judged separately.

Which licences convert and which do not

The exchange procedure published in MITOS, the Greek national register of administrative procedures, covers a valid licence issued in the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Africa or South Korea. The holder applies to the Directorate of Transport and Communications of the region where he has his normal residence and receives the matching Greek category without facing an examiner.

For every other country there is no exchange route. That hits precisely the sourcing markets Greek hauliers and distribution firms use: Nepal, India, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan. The worker is treated as a new candidate driver. He sits the theory exam in Greek, a practical exam with a regional examiner, and for categories C and CE the medical assessments required for professional driving.

An employer who assumes that a Nepali driver with ten years on heavy goods vehicles will be driving in Greece two weeks after arrival is planning on a false premise. The order runs the other way: he arrives on the employment approval, then opens the licence file, and in between he cannot drive a company vehicle professionally.

The documents the regional directorate asks for

MITOS names two documents that are routinely missing from the file and hold the case for weeks. The first is an official translation of the foreign licence. Greece accepts a translation from the translation service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from a lawyer, or from the consular authority of the issuing country in Greece. A private translation without one of those capacities is returned.

The second is a certificate from the issuing authority abroad confirming that the licence is genuine, valid, and not withheld because of a penalty or withdrawal. It is requested from the authority of the issuing state and travels through the consular authority. On the Nepal and Philippines routes that certificate usually takes four to eight weeks, and it is where a hiring timeline loses its month.

The CPC and the metaklisi file

The certificate of professional competence is a second document, not a stamp on the first. It is required of every driver carrying goods or passengers commercially. It does not transfer automatically from a third country, even where the driver holds an equivalent certificate at home. MITOS sets normal residence in Greece as a precondition, which means the worker needs a residence title and a registered address first, and only then joins an initial qualification or periodic training programme with an examination at the end.

In practice the employer pays twice and waits twice: once for the licence category, once for the CPC. The cost per driver, counting state fees, driving school tuition, medical assessments and translations, usually runs between 900 and 1,500 euro, on top of the wages paid during the months when the driver is not yet driving.

The table explains why Greek transport firms hiring from Asia often start people in warehouse, forklift or delivery assistant roles and move them behind the wheel in the second year, once the licence and the CPC are both in place.

The driving licence is not a precondition for employment approval. The employer runs the metaklisi E.4 procedure and the articles of Law 5038/2023 first, and the transport directorate file opens only once the worker holds a residence title. The employment contract has to describe the job the worker can actually perform on day one. If the stated duties and the real work diverge, a labour inspection will find it.

In the full cost of hiring, drivers are the most expensive category in the Greek market, because productive start is delayed by months rather than weeks.

If you are planning driver hires from a third country, build the timeline backwards from the issuing authority certificate, and put in writing what the worker does until the Greek licence is issued. Our team maps the route region by region on the employers page.