Nearly 700,000 vehicles in Greece have not passed a roadworthiness test (MOT), while 1.2 million have missed it since 2018. In addition, 243,904 vehicles are uninsured, 113,382 have not paid road tax, and 350,000 are over 40 years old yet still listed as active, according to Kathimerini.
Owners of vehicles flagged as uninsured, untaxed, or without a valid MOT are notified and fined. Those failing to meet at least one of these three obligations for seven consecutive years are supposed to be withdrawn from circulation altogether.
The figures emerged after cross-checking efforts by the Ministry of Digital Governance and the General Secretariat for Information Systems, aimed at cleaning up and verifying the country’s vehicle registry.
Registered vehicles in the Transport Ministry’s database exceed 10 million—matching the country’s entire population.
There are also 13,000 vehicles recorded as insured but simultaneously registered as destroyed, while three million vehicles have no owner’s tax identification number (AFM) on file—raising suspicions they may have been scrapped, stolen, or withdrawn but remain in the Transport Ministry’s database.
The process, however, is complex and requires coordination among multiple bodies: insurance companies, the Transport Ministry (vehicle data), the Energy Ministry (where road tax is paid and immobilization is declared), and the Ministry of Citizen Protection (responsible for recording stolen vehicles).
The findings underscore the scale of inconsistencies within the system—ranging from overlapping registrations to phantom vehicles. Beyond administrative inefficiency, the situation raises concerns over road safety and accountability, as tens of thousands of cars circulate outside the legal framework.
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