New community license
To have your application for a license approved, you and your company must fulfil the following criteria:
- Have an effective and stable establishment in Denmark.
- Have the requisite professional competences
- Have appropriate financial standing
- Have arrears not exceeding 50.000 DKK, to Danish public authorities
- Be of good repute
There are further requirements that must be fulfilled, depending on the form of your company. Find out more below.
Professional competences
To comply with the criteria of professional competences, you must within the last 10 years have completed a freight haulier course approved by the Danish Road Traffic Authority. Alternatively, you may be exempted from the course, if you have for the last five years continuously been employed in a supervisory function in a freight haulage business. You will still need to pass the written exam in the course. Written applications for exemptions, including relevant documentation, must be send to the Danish Road Traffic Authority, where your application will be processed.
You can find a list of approved schools here (open new window).
Financial standing
You can document your fulfilling of the financial standing criteria in one of the following ways:
- A statement of equity from a state authorized or registered auditor
- Collateral in the form of a guarantee supplied by a bank or insurance company
- By supplying the company’s latest annual report which is audited by a state authorized or registered auditor. If the company is newly founded, the equity in the opening balance will be considered
The size of the equity or the collateral is decided by the number of licenses applied for. The requirement for the size of the equity or collateral is in effect for the duration of the licensing period. The equity or collateral is 150.000 DKK for the first two licenses and 40.000 for every license after that.
Auditor’s statement or collateral must be made with a special text, which can be found in the relevant guidelines here (open a new document) and here (open a new document).
Arrears
Both the business and the transport manager must not have arrears to public authorities for 50.000 DKK or more.
The Danish Road Traffic Authority collects information about possible arrears from the Danish Tax Agency.
Being of good repute
You must be of good repute to be approved for a license as a freight haulier. Therefore, you must not have been convicted of crimes that can be determined to carry a risk that new crimes will be committed in relation to the running of the haulier business.
In relation to your application, the Danish Road Traffic Authority will obtain a full criminal record to ascertain whether you are of good repute.
Furthermore, you must be able to run the business in a safe manner and within the best practices of the industry. For instance, you must not have
- run a freight haulier business that has declared bankruptcy or been restructured, where the reasons for the financial difficulties were non-excusable
- undertaken illegal freight hauling for a sustained period
Whether the financial difficulties are non-excusable will be a matter of assessment by the Danish Road Traffic Authority in the individual case.
Company form
Depending of your company form, you will have to meet certain further criteria.
If your company is a personally owned company, you will only have to fulfil the requirements listed above.
If your company is a stock company, LLC or a partnership, the licenses must be applied for and issued to the company. The company must have employed a transport manager that must be in charge of the company’s freight transport.
If the transport manager does not own all the shares or stocks in the company, the contract of employment must be supplied to Authority. It must be evident in the contact that the person is employed as transport manager and is remunerated at a minimum of 15.000 DKK per month. If the transport manager is also a driver, they must instead be remunerated according to the agreement between the trade unions and the employers, as well as receive a remuneration of minimum 50.000 DKK a year for their work as transport manager.
The company in question must fulfil the above criteria relating to the establishment of the company, financial standing, arrears and repute. The transport manager must fulfil the criteria of professional competences, arrears and repute.
A company in possession of community licenses must follow the regulations of salary and contractual obligations that follows from the collective agreements.
While there is no stipulation that a company is a member of the employer organizations or the driver part of a trade union, the salary and contractual obligations for the individual driver must follow one of the collective agreements for drivers who are employed in freight transport.
Renewal of community license
To renew your community license(s), you must fulfil most of the requirements mentioned under the application for a new community license.
However, the stipulation of professional competences does not have to be met again, as the company had already complied with them, and have been maintaining their license throughout the allowed period.
Being appointed as transport manager
Companies that are conducting freight transport, and are not personally owned, must appoint at least one person as transport manager. It is a requirement that he is of good repute and have the necessary professional competences, as laid out above. Furthermore, the transport manager must effectively and continuously manage the transport activities of the company, must be genuinely employed by the company (or be the director, owner or shareholder of the company), while residing within the EU.
The transport manager must also be of age, not under guardianship and not either be submitted to restructuring or bankruptcy. Further, he must fulfil the criteria regarding reputation (being of good repute) and arrears mentioned in the sections above.
