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This applies to privately owned vessels, that is Pleasure Yachts, not commercial vessels.

A yacht owned by a non-European person or company can be brought into the EU under Temporary Admission (TA) for a maximum period of 18 months. After that period the vessel must either go outside the EU and be proven to have spent time – one night is enough in a non-European port and then it can come back under TA. Proof is by way of an invoice from the port and say a receipt for fuel. This can be doubled down by a screen shot of the GPS, just anything to substantiate the fact that the vessel was indeed out of Europe on a given date.

If a vessel is sold whilst it is in Europe under TA, then the vessel becomes liable for VAT/TVA if sold to a European national or sold at the quayside to anyone or any corporate body irrespective of their nationality. At that point, VAT/TVA is payable to the member state where the vessel is kept. There are a variety of mechanisms for determining the value on which it is paid. In France the value is determined by a Douane (Customs) affiliated Expert Maritime (Surveyor). The valuation is often at odds with the actual value of the yacht, and in my experience, has been lower than the actual commercial value.

To legitimately avoid having to pay VAT/TVA when the vessel is sold, the transaction must take place in International Waters. That is a minimum of 12 miles from the nearest European land mass. This includes islands, so for example it is not sufficient to leave the port of Antibes and simply measure 12nm as the Îles de Lérins will still put the yacht within French territorial waters.

The vessel must be sold to a non-EU domiciled person or company to qualify for TA. If sold to say a British company, then the vessel would usually be registered under a British Flag and would require a Tonnage Survey. The total cost of this registration and survey is around € 1,500, but it serves as excellent security as far as the warranty of title is concerned. A private individual can use one of the easier registry’s such as the UK Small Ships Registry (SSR) which is inexpensive, is easy to administrate and manage.

There is no obligation to declare a vessel as being under TA in France at least. Though there is a mechanism for officially declaring it has having entered European Waters, this can be done with the Douanes themselves or through one of the agencies that can take care of these formalities for you. I have used the services of Mathez Freight in Monaco and The Woy in Nice.