The Green Card system: how car insurance crosses borders

The Council of Bureaux — the Brussels-based body running the scheme — dates the system to the UNECE Inland Transport Committee in 1949 and publishes its machinery openly: the member bureaux by country and date of entry, the internal regulations revised assembly by assembly, and the consumer-facing FAQ on the IMIC — the International Motor Insurance Card, the document drivers know as the Green Card (no longer necessarily green: format and colour are exactly what the FAQ addresses).

The principle: each member country's bureau guarantees that a visiting motorist's home insurance responds to local victims as local law requires — which is what makes one policy drivable across the membership.

Source: Council of Bureaux, the Green Card system, read 5 September 2026.

Inside the EEA the system runs plate-based: registration plates serve as the presumption of insurance, so no physical card is demanded between member states. The card earns its keep at the system's edges — the non-EEA members where border checks still ask for the IMIC — and in claims practice anywhere, as the cleanest proof of cover details after a collision abroad. Ask your motor insurer for it before long cross-border trips; issuance is part of the policy, not a product.

For movers the deeper point is different: a home-country motor policy is a visiting instrument. Once the car and its keeper become residents — French registration, Dutch registration — local insurance follows local registration, and the Green Card reverts to holiday duty.

Worth one explicit paragraph because the files travel together: the Green Card proves motor liability — it says nothing about the health insurance your visa or residence route requires, which runs on entirely separate published rules per country. Both live in the same glovebox-and-folder phase of a move; only one of them is our specialty:

Check a policy against the rule