Traffic Fines on Rental Cars: What Rental Companies Must Do

A speed camera records a number plate, not a face. When one of your cars is caught during a rental, the notice comes to your company, and the authority expects you to say who was driving. The deadline, the form and the cost of silence vary by country. Here are France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Croatia, then what they share.

This is general information based on the official sources listed below, as of September 2026. It does not replace legal, tax or insurance advice: rules change, so have your procedure and terms checked by a lawyer in each country where you rent, and follow the instructions on the notice.

France: name the driver within 45 days

For offences recorded by automatic cameras, Article L121-6 of the French Highway Code (code de la route) requires a company's legal representative to give the identity and address of the driver, by registered letter or online, within 45 days of the notice being sent or handed over. ANTAI, which processes these notices, counts from the date printed at the top left of the notice. Only theft, plate cloning or force majeure exempt you; a rental does not.

Miss the deadline and a second notice, for failing to name the driver, comes on top of the first: for a legal entity, €675, reduced to €450 or increased to €1,875, and up to €3,750 before the police court if contested. Paying the original fine yourself does not stop it. Designate on the ANTAI website with the driver's identity, address and licence details, or by registered letter with the form attached to the notice; our French guide to naming the driver (in French) details each step.

Germany: the rental company as a witness

German authorities hear a rental company as a witness, and according to the Munich Higher Regional Court (OLG München, 2025), naming the person to whom the vehicle was rented at the time is part of a rental company's duty to cooperate. The Karlsruhe central fines office requires its questionnaire to be returned with the driver's details for fines from €60. Answer within the period stated in the letter: behind it runs a six-month limitation period for traffic offences, in force since 1 July 2026 (§ 26(3) StVG).

If no driver can be identified, the authority can order the keeper to keep a logbook (Fahrtenbuch) for one or more vehicles, including future ones (§ 31a StVZO), and for stopping and parking offences the keeper then bears the costs of the proceedings (§ 25a StVG). Our German guide to naming the driver (in German) also covers private car parks.

Italy: 60 days to pass on the renter's details

Unless the offence is contested on the spot, the notice (verbale) must be served within 90 days on the offender or, failing that, on a liable person shown in the vehicle registers (Article 201 of the Highway Code): your company. Yet for a vehicle rented without a driver the renter is jointly liable instead of the owner (Article 196), and the competition authority AGCM notes that since 10 November 2021 rental companies are, as a rule, no longer jointly liable for their customers' fines.

Each police command sets the form: Roma Capitale asks for the renter's details within 60 calendar days of service, by registered letter with a copy of the contract, while Cremona has an online form. For offences with penalty points, the law sets 60 days from service to give the driver's personal and licence details (Article 126-bis); failing to do so without a justified and documented reason costs €291 to €1,166 in the text published on Normattiva. Our Italian guide to fines and driver details (in Italian) goes through each step.

Spain: 20 calendar days, through the DEV

According to the DGT, registration in the Dirección Electrónica Vial (DEV) is compulsory for legal entities, which it has notified only electronically since 1 November 2022; a DEV notification not opened within ten calendar days is deemed rejected. Article 11 of the Traffic Law requires the owner to identify the driver, with their licence number. In short-term rental the renter is liable (Article 82), and for a licence missing from the Spanish register, a rental company may send a copy of the rental contract instead.

You have 20 calendar days (Article 93), counted by the DGT from the day after receipt, and a DEV notice is answered online. Failing to identify the driver truthfully is a very serious offence (Article 77.j): the fine is double the original if that was minor and triple if it was serious or very serious (Article 80.2.b), with no 50% reduction. Our Spanish guide to identifying the driver (in Spanish) covers regional authorities.

Croatia: 15 days to name one driver

Under Article 229 of the Road Traffic Safety Act, the owner or user of a vehicle must, at the request of the police or a local authority official, give credible information on who was driving: one person, since information on several does not count, and for a company, through its responsible person. Failing to do so within 15 days is an offence, with a fine of €660 to €1,990. Reply as the letter asks and keep proof of the dates. Our Croatian guide to traffic fines (in Croatian) details the procedure.

Offences abroad: Directive (EU) 2015/413

Directive (EU) 2015/413 facilitates the enforcement of sanctions for offences such as speeding or failing to stop at a red light committed with a vehicle registered in another Member State: the country of the offence can search the others' registration data. Germany's Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) sends keeper data abroad electronically, and Croatia's interior ministry describes the same exchange through EUCARIS. The letter reaches you in the language of the registration document, if available: answer it by its own rules and deadline. Directive (EU) 2024/3237, which amends the text, must be transposed by 20 July 2027. In the other direction, name a customer who lives abroad like anyone else, with full address and licence details; Italy allows 360 days to serve residents abroad (Article 201).

Admin fees: what courts and regulators have said

Many operators charge a fee for handling a notice. Four of the five countries have a published decision on it:

France — the Nantes administrative court of appeal held that a rental company's €25 admin fee per file falls outside the scope of VAT (11 June 2024, No. 23NT00848).
Germany — the OLG München struck down a €29 flat-fee clause as higher than the damage normally to be expected (28 February 2025; § 309 No. 5(a) BGB).
Italy — in decisions made public on 9 May 2024, the AGCM fined six rental companies over an unfair clause charging customers a fee for handling fines and unpaid parking or tolls, and ordered its removal.
Spain — in August 2026, the consumer affairs ministry announced a €1 million fine on a rental company that charged €33.88 to €45 for handling fines, finding the clause unfair; it can be appealed in court.
Croatia — our Croatian guide found no specific rule or published position.

Put any fee in the terms accepted before departure, in your car rental agreement, keep it proportionate, and never take it silently from the security deposit.

Data protection: the law, not consent

Passing a customer's details to an authority needs a legal basis: usually compliance with a legal obligation, Article 6(1)(c) of the GDPR, which France's data protection authority CNIL retains for naming drivers: not the customer's consent, though your privacy notice should mention it. On retention, Spain's Royal Decree 933/2021 sets three years after the service ends for the register of renters, drivers and contracts, and Croatia at least two years for rental contract records until its Central Register is in place. Otherwise, keep data no longer than necessary (Article 5(1)(e) GDPR): set a period, write it down and purge on schedule.

How to organise: contract data, timestamps, deadlines

In all five countries, the answer is prepared at the counter:

Complete contract data — for the renter and each additional driver: name, date of birth, full home address, ID document, licence number with date and country of issue.
Reliable timestamps — actual pickup and return times from the vehicle condition report, which decide which contract a notice belongs to.
A deadline register — each notice logged with its authority, deadline and a named person: 45 days in France, 60 in Italy for penalty-point offences, 20 in Spain, 15 in Croatia, the letter's period in Germany.

For business accounts with several drivers, see our guide to van rental software; if you are still setting up, see starting a car rental business in Europe.

We rent vehicles ourselves from Chambéry, in Savoie, across four sites, and built Corsiva OS for our own agencies first. For France, its fines module starts from the notice received: it matches plate, date and time to the rental and the driver, prepares the designation details, counts down the 45 days with an alert, informs the customer with a copy of the notice, then archives and purges the data. It charges the customer nothing; you still file the designation yourself. In the other countries, the software links each notice to the rental and the driver and keeps the data collected at the contract, so you can answer the authority within the deadline. Plans start at €59 per month excluding VAT with a one-year commitment (€70 without); the interface is in English and French, and details are on the pricing page.

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Traffic fines on rental cars: what the rental company must do, country by country