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COC-AUTO GUIDE

B2B Auctions and Dealer-to-Dealer Sales: Why the COC Isn’t Guaranteed by Law (and How to Protect Your Margin by Contract)

20 September 2026

B2B Auctions and Dealer-to-Dealer Sales: Why the COC Isn’t Guaranteed by Law (and How to Protect Your Margin by Contract)

By Loredana Zaharia, coc-auto.eu

No. EU law does not require a Certificate of Conformity for a used-vehicle resale — including B2B auctions and dealer-to-dealer sales. Regulation (EU) 2018/858 obliges the manufacturer to issue the COC to the buyer of a new vehicle. On second-hand transactions, whether you get one, and whether you get anything back when you don’t, depends entirely on your purchase contract.

Most buyer desks discover this the wrong way round: after the invoice is paid, when the registration file goes back and the stock unit sits on the yard accruing floor-plan interest. The legal boundary is not vague, it is just badly documented — so here it is, with the article numbers, the platform mechanics, and the clause you should be putting into your own purchase terms.

If you are buying a single vehicle for personal use rather than for stock, our buyer’s checklist for auction paperwork is the more useful page. This one is written for professional buyers.

What you’ll read

  1. Do EU auctions and dealer-to-dealer sales legally require a COC?
  2. What auction platforms actually promise about documents — and what they don’t
  3. The 2026 electronic COC rollout: what’s live and what isn’t
  4. The contract clause that protects your margin
  5. You’ve already bought the lot and the COC is missing

The obligation exists, but it is aimed at someone else, at a different moment, and towards a different person than most buyers assume.

Where the manufacturer’s obligation actually ends

Regulation (EU) 2018/858, Article 36(1), states that “the manufacturer shall issue a certificate of conformity in paper format to accompany each vehicle, whether complete, incomplete or completed, that is manufactured in conformity with the approved type of vehicle.” The same paragraph requires it to be delivered free of charge to the buyer together with the vehicle, without the buyer having to ask for it or submit additional information.

Read the sentence as an operations person, not as a lawyer. The duty falls on the manufacturer, it attaches to manufacture and first supply, and it is discharged once. There is no equivalent article anywhere in the Regulation that obliges a second, third or fifth seller to hand the document on. When a vehicle is resold — at a B2B auction, out of a lease return portfolio, from one dealer’s stock to another’s — the COC travels as a piece of property, not as a legal entitlement. If it was lost at the second owner, nothing in EU type-approval law compels the fifth seller to reconstruct it for you.

There is one entitlement that does survive: Article 36(3) provides that “for a period of 10 years after the date of manufacture of the vehicle, the manufacturer shall, at the request of the vehicle owner, issue a duplicate of the certificate of conformity in paper format in return for a payment that does not exceed the cost of issuing the duplicate certificate.” The duplicate must carry the word “duplicate” on its face.

Two operational details in that sentence decide whether it helps you at all:

  • Ten years from the date of manufacture, not from first registration. A 2015-built unit bought at auction in 2026 is already outside the window. The manufacturer may still supply the data commercially, but it is no longer obliged to.
  • At the request of the vehicle owner. Between the hammer falling and the transfer of ownership, you are not yet the owner. On paper-only lots this is exactly the gap where a file stalls, and it is why the clause in section four is worded around evidence of title rather than around goodwill.

Why B2C warranty rules don’t rescue you here

Buyers coming from a retail background assume the consumer-sales regime provides a fallback. It does not. Directive (EU) 2019/771 on contracts for the sale of goods — the instrument behind the two-year liability period and the reversed burden of proof — applies to contracts between a seller and a consumer, defined as a natural person acting for purposes outside that person’s trade, business, craft or profession. A dealer buying stock is, by definition, outside its scope. CarOnSale, a German B2B marketplace, puts the same point to its own users in plain language: when trading between dealers, warranty law does not apply.

In Germany the consequence is explicit in the civil code, the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB). A B2B seller can exclude liability for defects contractually, and the only statutory limits are in § 444 BGB: the seller cannot rely on that exclusion “soweit er den Mangel arglistig verschwiegen oder eine Garantie für die Beschaffenheit der Sache übernommen hat” — insofar as it fraudulently concealed the defect or gave a guarantee as to the condition of the goods. Translated into buying practice: unless the seller lied about the documents or gave you an express undertaking, a standard trade exclusion holds.

Transaction Who owes a COC Legal basis Your fallback if it’s missing
New vehicle, first supply to the buyer Manufacturer Art. 36(1), Reg. (EU) 2018/858 Statutory — the document is due free of charge with the vehicle
Duplicate for a vehicle you own, under 10 years old Manufacturer, on request Art. 36(3), Reg. (EU) 2018/858 Statutory, capped at the cost of issuing
Used vehicle, B2B auction lot Nobody, by law — Platform terms only, and only to the extent they cover buyers
Used vehicle, direct dealer-to-dealer Nobody, by law — Your purchase contract. Nothing else
Used vehicle sold to a private consumer Nobody, by law Dir. (EU) 2019/771 covers conformity, not documents Not applicable to your B2B purchase

What Auction Platforms Actually Promise About Documents (and What They Don’t)

Platform terms are not law, but they are the only written protection most buyers actually have. They are worth reading precisely because of what they leave out.

What the seller must disclose before the lot goes live

Per OPENLANE Europe’s own terms and conditions for sellers, the seller warrants that it possesses the vehicle documents, “including but not limited to: the registration certificate and conformity certificate,” and — this is the operative sentence — if the seller does not possess the registration certificate or conformity certificate, the seller will inform OPENLANE Europe before the auction. The platform reserves the right to refuse a vehicle or cancel a sale if the seller does not remediate the issue within the agreed timeframe.

That is a genuine disclosure duty. It is also a duty owed to the platform, not to you.

What happens when they don’t: cancellation versus compensation

Now look for the buyer-side mirror of that clause. In OPENLANE’s published seller terms there is no provision granting the buyer a price reduction, a document-handling credit, or compensation when the COC turns out to be absent. The remedy that exists is the platform’s own right to refuse or cancel. And in its buyer FAQ, the platform states plainly that it does not supply COCs for vehicles that do not qualify — older units, non-EU specifications, converted vehicles — and refers buyers to an external third-party COC provider instead.

Read those two documents together and the commercial position is unambiguous:

  • The seller carries a disclosure duty towards the platform.
  • The platform carries a discretion, not an obligation.
  • The buyer carries the cost, unless the buyer negotiated something better.

eCarsTrade, another B2B wholesale platform, is equally candid in its own content that vehicles from certain markets will very rarely come with a COC at all. None of this is a scandal; it is simply the market telling you, in its own terms, that documents are a commercial risk allocated by contract. The mistake is to treat a platform’s seller-side rulebook as if it were your buyer-side protection.

And in a direct dealer-to-dealer purchase there is no platform rulebook at all. Nobody is checking, nobody has a cancellation right, and the only text that governs the document is the one you wrote — or didn’t.

The 2026 Electronic COC Rollout: What’s Actually Live vs. Still Promised

This is the part that changed under most buying desks this summer, and it changes what “the COC is missing” even means.

EUCARIS is an exchange system, not a public lookup tool

Article 37(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/858 requires that from 5 July 2026 the manufacturer make the certificate of conformity available, free of charge and without undue delay after the date of manufacture, to the approval authority that granted the whole-vehicle type-approval, as structured data in electronic format. Article 37(3) then requires approval authorities to make that data accessible to the authorities of the Member States and to the Commission. Article 36(2) is the counterpart: from 5 July 2026 the manufacturer is exempted from issuing the paper COC where it supplies the electronic data under Article 37(1).

Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/133 sets the plumbing: an XML schema, standardised Initial Vehicle Information (IVI) messages, and exchange through the national access points of the European Car and Driving Licence Information System, EUCARIS.

Which brings up the single most common misconception in the trade right now. EUCARIS describes itself, in its own words, as “not a database nor a central repository but an exchange mechanism,” “developed by and for governmental authorities.” There is no EU-wide public portal where a dealer types a VIN and pulls a COC. The obligation runs manufacturer → approval authority → other authorities. You are not in that chain.

What to check before you rely on a “digital COC” claim at auction

National authorities are, however, starting to open windows onto that data — and for DACH and Benelux buyers this is now operationally relevant.

In Germany, the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt announced a new online service allowing eCoC technical data to be retrieved by vehicle identification number. Per the KBA’s own announcement, the service covers vehicles placed in circulation in Germany from October 2019 onwards, initially focused on passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, delivering the manufacturer’s dataset as XML, with a more readable German-labelled view planned. The prerequisite it states is decisive: an electronic dataset from the manufacturer must already be filed with the KBA for that specific vehicle. No filing, no retrieval.

In the Netherlands, the Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer (RDW) has published the harder version of the same shift for its business partners: for vehicles in categories M, N and O produced on or after 29 November 2026, a digital CvO — Certificaat van Overeenstemming, the Dutch name for the Certificate of Conformity — is mandatory, and “zonder eCvO geven wij geen kenteken af” — without an eCvO, no registration is issued. National small series and categories L, T, C, R, S and U are outside that requirement. The RDW also offers a VIN-based check for whether a digital CvO already exists, and states equally clearly on its CvO page that it does not issue CvOs itself: “Een CvO vraagt u altijd op bij de fabrikant. Dit kan niet bij ons.”

On the transition itself: according to TrustPro, a qualified trust service provider tracking the file, Member States agreed at the 168th meeting of the Commission’s Motor Vehicles Working Group on 6 May 2026 to a transitional arrangement under which paper COCs, or print-outs of the eCoC, may continue to be used until 29 November 2026 at the latest, for jurisdictions whose national infrastructure was not operational in time. The RDW’s own published date for its mandatory regime matches that endpoint.

Date What applies Where it comes from
5 July 2026 Manufacturer must supply the COC to the type-approval authority as structured electronic data; paper exemption becomes available Art. 37(1) and Art. 36(2), Reg. (EU) 2018/858
5 July – 29 Nov 2026 Transitional use of paper COCs / eCoC print-outs where national infrastructure was not ready Member State arrangement in the Commission’s Motor Vehicles Working Group, per TrustPro
Since July 2026 (DE) KBA online retrieval of eCoC data by VIN, vehicles in circulation in Germany from Oct 2019, subject to the manufacturer’s dataset being on file KBA announcement
From 29 Nov 2026 (NL) eCvO mandatory for M, N and O vehicles produced on or after that date; no eCvO, no Dutch registration RDW

The practical consequence for a buying desk: for a late-2026-built unit, “there is no COC in the file” may not be a defect at all — there may never have been a paper document. For anything older, it is still exactly the defect it always was. Your intake process has to distinguish the two, because the remedies are completely different. Before you rely on a seller’s “it’s digital” claim, check whether the data actually exists for that VIN in the relevant national system, and remember that what registration authorities actually check in a COC is the data itself — VIN match, CO₂ figures, masses — not the medium it arrives on.

The Contract Clause That Actually Protects Your Margin

Since no statute will give you the document, the only leverage is the one you draft. On a platform you are largely stuck with its terms; in direct dealer-to-dealer buying you write your own, and most desks never do.

What to put in writing before you bid or sign

Five elements, in the order they matter. None of them require a lawyer to draft, and all of them are enforceable as ordinary contract terms between businesses.

Clause element What it says in substance What it buys you
Document warranty Seller warrants the COC (paper or eCoC dataset) exists for this VIN and is transferable Converts an assumption into a contractual statement — and a breach if it’s false
Disclosure duty with a deadline Seller must disclose any missing or incomplete document before payment Moves discovery in front of the money, where you still have leverage
Delivery deadline with a defined consequence COC delivered within X working days of payment; after that, a per-day price reduction or the right to rescind Puts a number on delay instead of leaving you to chase it
Cost allocation If a replacement is needed, the seller bears the cost of obtaining it Stops the “not my problem” answer that follows every unpaid invoice
Retention A defined part of the purchase price is retained until documents are delivered The only element that actually works without litigation

Retention is the one that changes behaviour. A disclosure duty without money attached is a request; a retained balance is a reason to answer the phone. Keep the retained amount proportionate to the realistic cost and delay of obtaining a replacement, and state it in net terms, excl. VAT, so it survives a reverse-charge invoice without argument.

Two jurisdiction notes for the markets most of our clients buy in:

  • Germany. A trade exclusion of liability for defects is normal and enforceable, so a warranty you actually want has to be written in. § 444 BGB only rescues you where the seller concealed the defect fraudulently or gave a guarantee as to condition — the second limb is precisely why the document warranty above is worth its two lines.
  • Netherlands. Under Article 7:23 of the Dutch Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek, Book 7), a buyer must notify the seller of a non-conformity within a reasonable time of discovering it, or of when it should reasonably have been discovered — and a professional buyer is held to a shorter, stricter standard than a consumer. Miss the window and the claim lapses. Build a documented intake check into the receiving process, dated, so the clock is provable.

Who pays for a replacement COC if the lot doesn’t have one

Absent a clause, you do. That is the whole point of writing one. And note what you cannot rely on: the Article 36(3) duplicate route requires that the request comes from the vehicle owner and that the vehicle is under ten years old from date of manufacture. On an auction lot where title has not yet transferred, or on an older unit, that route is closed to you on the day you most want it.

Where a COC genuinely cannot be obtained — manufacturer gone, type-approval no longer valid, vehicle modified out of its approved type — the fallback is an individual approval route rather than a document. We cover the decision in COC versus individual vehicle approval; the short version for a buying desk is that it costs materially more and takes materially longer, which is exactly why it belongs in your bid price, not in your surprises.

If You’ve Already Bought the Lot and the COC Is Missing

The order of operations matters here, because two of these steps are cheap and reversible and the rest are not.

Verify before you assume it’s just missing, not fraudulent

Auction lots are the natural habitat of document problems, and “missing” and “fake” arrive through the same door. Before you order anything or escalate anything:

  1. Establish whether an electronic dataset exists for the VIN. For German-market vehicles, the KBA VIN retrieval covers units in circulation from October 2019 where the manufacturer has filed the data. For the Netherlands, the RDW offers a digital CvO check by VIN. If the data is there, you may not need a paper document at all.
  2. If a document was supplied, verify it before you submit it. A rejected file costs you the same days as a missing one, plus your credibility with the registration office. Our guide on how to verify a Certificate of Conformity and avoid COC scams covers what actually separates a genuine document from a convincing one.
  3. Date and document the discovery. In the Netherlands this protects your notification window; in Germany it is the evidence base for any argument about concealment. Everywhere, it is what makes a retention clause enforceable rather than decorative.
  4. Notify the seller in writing, referencing the clause. If you bought through a platform, raise it with the platform as well — its right to cancel is not your right, but it is leverage.

Ordering a replacement without stalling your stock

If the document has to be reconstructed, the operational question is throughput, not price per unit. A vehicle waiting on a document is a vehicle carrying floor-plan cost with no offsetting turn, and the difference between a five-day and a thirty-day turnaround on a batch of lots is usually far larger than the fee difference between routes. Start the replacement process in parallel with the rest of the intake, not after it, and group VINs by make so the file goes out in one motion rather than fifteen.

You can order a replacement COC online for vehicles that qualify, and if you are unsure whether a specific unit does, the background on eligibility and the document itself sits in our full guide to what a Certificate of Conformity is.

Buying lots regularly? The cheapest fix is the one applied before the hammer, not after. Run the VIN through our vehicle history check as part of pre-bid due diligence, and if you are handling recurring volume across DACH or Benelux stock, send us the VIN list and the markets you register in through the contact form on this site — we will come back with processing times per make and a per-unit price in net terms, excl. VAT.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a COC?

A Certificate of Conformity is the document in which the manufacturer declares that a specific vehicle conforms to the EU type it was approved against. It carries the identification and technical data — VIN, type-approval number, masses, emissions figures — that a registration authority needs in order to register the vehicle in another Member State without a national approval procedure.

Does the seller have to tell me if the COC is missing before I bid?

Not under EU type-approval law. On a platform, it may be required under the platform’s own terms: per OPENLANE’s seller conditions, a seller that does not possess the registration certificate or conformity certificate must inform the platform before the auction. In a direct dealer-to-dealer purchase there is no such duty unless your contract creates one.

Can the platform cancel my purchase over a missing COC — and do I get compensated?

Cancellation is generally a right the platform reserves for itself, not a remedy it grants you. In OPENLANE’s published seller terms there is no clause giving the buyer a price reduction or compensation when the COC is absent. Compensation has to come from your own purchase terms.

Does consumer warranty law protect me when I buy from another dealer?

No. Directive (EU) 2019/771 applies to contracts between a seller and a consumer — a natural person acting outside their trade or business. A dealer buying stock is outside its scope. In Germany, § 444 BGB confirms that a contractual exclusion of defect liability holds between businesses except where the seller fraudulently concealed the defect or gave a guarantee as to condition.

Is there now a public database where I can check if a car has a COC?

Not at EU level. EUCARIS, the system designated for exchanging electronic COC data, describes itself as an exchange mechanism developed by and for governmental authorities, not a central repository. Individual authorities are opening national windows onto the data: the KBA offers retrieval of eCoC data by VIN for vehicles in circulation in Germany from October 2019 where the manufacturer’s dataset is on file, and the RDW offers a digital CvO check by VIN.

Our vehicle was built after 5 July 2026 and there is no paper COC in the file. Is that a defect?

Not necessarily. From 5 July 2026 the manufacturer is exempted from issuing the paper certificate where it supplies the data electronically under Article 37(1). For those units the correct check is whether the electronic dataset exists for the VIN, not whether a sheet of paper is in the folder.

Sources

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