Taking Swiss Car to Germany or vice versa

Transportation, Travel and Trips
1
Hi all

I have Swiss Driving license and a locally registered car in Neuchâtel. I will acquire German residence permit and live partially there and partially in Neuchatel. I was wondering if i will be able to keep my Swiss Driving license and hence the car while living in Germany with German Residence permit, but CH registered car?

Kindly advise, what i should do. Should i get German driving license + german registered car? Thank you.

2

Are you non-EU? If so, it’s not possible to be resident in 2 countries as far as I know.

3
More to the point. I don’t believe you can have two valid driving licenses at the same time. Normally you are required to turn one in to get the new one.

4
do you have a Swiss passport? If the answer is yes then you might be able to do some of what you think you would like to do, for a short time.

is the car leased or owned? If it's the latter, you could re-register it in Germany.

5
OP is not asking about the liscense but about the car!

As SC said, if you're Swiss and officially keep your address in Neuchâtel you might get away with it. I would suggest to get a garage in Germany though, so your Swiss car is tucked away and doesn't attract attention by being parked in a certain area regularly.

6
Unless you are American, Serbian, or from one of the countries where you driving license is needed as ID. Then the Swiss police put an orange sticker stating "not valid for use in Switzerland" on your old license and hand it back to you when you convert it.

Or you take a second driving test, which sometimes is easy...

But to the OPs point- will you keep a Swiss residence permit? B/C, etc?

7
This is what s/he said

8
It's still about the car.

Of course if OP gets a German registered car, s/he would have to get a German driver's licence. But in that case s/he would get in trouble in Neuchâtel, specially if OP is Swiss.

Will OP pay taxes in both countries? Will OP be "Wochenaufenthalter" weekly resident/Résident hebdomadaire and if so where? (taxes are paid where you are on the week-ends).

I like the question, it's interesting. I'm keen on hearing about the outcome.

9
Only after one year.

Being Swiss or not changes nothing, all that matters is residency.

Tom

10
Correct but OP will have residency in Neuchâtel - and be Swiss. Swiss people living here are not allowed to drive around with foreign driver's licences.

(Which used to be too bad when you had "lost" the Swiss one to the police and actually had a valid American one )

11
It's quite simple really, if the OP remains officially Swiss resident then they must keep their Swiss licence in order to drive here. And if they keep the licence and residence then any vehicle must also remain Swiss-registered, unless there's no intention ever to drive it here.

But I think they key point here is that they seem to believe that they can get a German residence permit while still keeping the Swiss one, which raises more questions that it answers. As far as the Germans are concerned being resident there should mean you have a German licence, and everything else to do with the car would surely have to be German too. But I think they'd need to be asking on a German forum rather than a Swiss one to get thise questions addressed.

12
If you are non-EU and have two residencies (CH/DE) you have a complicated customs problem with the car.

If you own a Swiss car, you must enter German customs the first time you enter Germany driving it and:

1. Declare you are importing the car into Germany (since you’ve got residency in Germany, you’re not allowed to drive a Swiss car longer than an interim period after the import)

2. Request an exemption from import since you also have residency in Switzerland.

A similar problem also exists in the opposite direction if you own a German car.

I had a similar problem and couldn’t find a Lawyer to handle the case and help me decide which car to purchase (CH/DE). Swiss Lawyers only agreed to represent me at the Swiss customs. Same for German Lawyers with the German customs. I talked and exchanged emails with some of the best customs Lawyers in the Basel/Lörrach area.

I decided not to own a car for the meanwhile, until I’ll be able to cancel one of my residencies.

I recommend you to visit German customs without the car (have someone give you a ride and also act as a witness) and ask theoretically, what should a person in your situation do. Then follow their instructions.

13
I think the entire problem becomes irrelevant at this point.

14
OP is not Swiss. https://www.englishforum.ch/2376229-post1.html

And Swiss people can drive here for one year with a foreign license after moving here, same as anyone else, my daughter did when she returned from the US after 4 1/2 years in the US with a a US license, perfectly legal.

Tom

15
You keep mentioning that. Are you expecting OP's German company to go bankrupt within one year which will bring him back here for good?

If not, this is not really a thorough solution, is it.

16
This is key as well as whether the OP is EU or not. It seems not and I would therefore expect the OP would need to work or study in Germany to get a permit. Whether the Swiss would allow the permit to be kept is the question and seems unlikely. But the OP would then need an address and to pay health insurance in Switzerland at the very least (that's before the tax office starts sniffing around).

17
Not quite true. I've got a collection of driving licences acquired over the years as I've wandered throughout Europe. I've still got my original UK DL, printed on a folded sheet of paper and was able even to find it on the DVLC website. Got a French one somewhere and a German one, which got a hole punched into it when I acquired my Swiss one. No-one ever asked me to turn them in.

18
An EU license would be acceptable in DE, for a German resident, just not a Swiss one after the first year.

19
Yes, but the OP currently has a Swiss one, so whether converted it to a DE or other EU one isn't really relevant - the fact remains that they would not be able to continue to drive in Switzerland, as a Swiss resident, without a Swiss licence.

Similarly the point about the one year delay, mentioned by Tom - if you've already got a Swiss licence you can't convert it back to an EU one then use it for a year in CH, unless you were to actually move away from Switzerland, i.e. give up your residency here, for some time (is it a year too?) and then back again. So not in any way relevant to the OP's question.

Meanwhile the OP still hasn't explained exactly how he's going to be legally resident in two countries at once, which is crucial to being able to answer the question.

20
My boss has a similar situation, works in CH and pays taxes here and has his family in DE. He has 2 driving licences (took him a loooooong time to achieve that and it wasn ́t easy).