The Polish license plate trick may have its days numbered. The government is preparing a new crackdown against the so-called “forecasting” of cars, the system used by thousands of motorists to register vehicles abroad which in reality continue to circulate permanently in Italy, above all reducing insurance costs.
The innovation is contained in the basic text of the reform of the Highway Code, which however is not yet law. The document was sent by the Ministry of Transport to the sector associations, who will be able to submit observations by 13 September. The final text should then reach the government by October 14th.
The rule under study provides that for vehicles with foreign license plates registered in the Register of Foreign Vehicles, the insurance obligation can be fulfilled through an Italian company or through a foreign company authorized to carry out motor liability insurance in Italy. It is therefore not a question of banning foreign license plates, but of targeting foreign registrations used only to circumvent the higher Italian costs.
The trick of Polish license plates
The phenomenon mainly concerns Poland and is particularly widespread in Campania. The mechanism is relatively simple: the car is removed from the PRA and formally exported, then registered in Poland in the name of a foreign company. The same car is then rented or used by the previous Italian owner.
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In this way the motorist can continue to use the same car in Italy with Polish license plates and insurance. There are even companies on the web that openly advertise these services, promising savings of over 70% between insurance, road tax and other costs. One site offers, for example, Polish registration, insurance and Reve registration and advertises a basic liability insurance for a few hundred euros a year. It should be noted that these are figures and percentages indicated by the commercial companies themselves and not certified savings.
The operation is not automatically illegal. Since 2022, the law allows an Italian resident to use a vehicle registered to a foreign entity, but if availability exceeds 30 days during the year, even if not consecutive, the vehicle must be registered with Reve and there must be a document on board that demonstrates the title of use, for example a rental or loan contract.
The problem arises when the registration abroad is only fictitious, or when insurance, inspection or other requirements established by law are lacking.
The “Italian phenomenon”
It was the Polish insurers themselves who asked to stop the system, after having found themselves paying millions of euros for accidents which occurred mainly in Campania with cars registered in Poland but used permanently in Italy, in many cases without valid insurance coverage.
The Polish Motor Insurers’ Bureau (Pbuk) dubbed it “proceder włoski”, the “Italian phenomenon”. According to the body, in 2025 over 11 thousand accidents occurred in Italy with vehicles with Polish license plates and around 1,300 involved vehicles without valid insurance coverage. For these cases the Polish system would have incurred disbursements of 18.4 million zlotys, over 4 million euros. The Pbuk then started judicial actionsboth in Italy and in Poland, to recover the sums paid, and asked the Warsaw government for stricter rules on registrations and inspections, also reporting cases of cars registered in Poland without ever having been physically brought into the country.
Now the police can check Polish license plates
A first crackdown is already operational. With a circular dated August 13, the Ministry of the Interior informed prefectures, police headquarters and law enforcement agencies of the possibility of using the portals of the Polish authorities to verify vehicles registered in the country. The agents can thus check the correspondence of the vehicle data much more quickly and above all verify the insurance coverage of cars with Polish license plates stopped during an inspection.
It is an important step because the difficulty of carrying out immediate checks on foreign registers represented one of the weak points of the system.
What will change
The restriction therefore does not mean the end of foreign license plates on Italian roads. A car regularly registered abroad will continue to be able to circulate in our country in the cases provided for by law. The focus is on those vehicles which are Polish only on paper, but which are used on a regular basis in Italy to save on insurance and taxes or to make it more difficult to collect fines.