1.Member States may exempt a particular vehicle, whether unique or not, from compliance with one or more of the provisions of this Directive or with one or more of the regulatory acts listed in Annex IV or Annex XI, provided that they impose alternative requirements.
The provisions referred to in subparagraph 1 shall only be waived where a Member State has reasonable grounds for so doing.
‘Alternative requirements’ means administrative provisions and technical requirements which aim to ensure a level of road safety and environmental protection, which is equivalent to the greatest extent practicable to the level provided for by the provisions of Annex IV or Annex XI, as appropriate.
2.Member States shall not carry out destructive tests. They shall use any relevant information provided by the applicant establishing compliance with the alternative requirements.
3.Member States shall accept any system, component or separate technical unit EC type-approval instead of the alternative requirements.
4.An application for individual approval shall be submitted by the manufacturer or by the owner of the vehicle or by a person acting on their behalf, provided the latter is established in the Community.
5.A Member State shall grant an individual approval if the vehicle conforms to the description appended to the application and satisfies the applicable technical requirements and shall without unjustified delay issue an individual approval certificate.
The format of the individual approval certificate shall be based on the template of the EC type-approval certificate set out in Annex VI and shall contain at least the information necessary to complete the application for registration provided for in Council Directive 1999/37/EC of 29 April 1999 on the registration documents for vehicles(1). Individual approval certificates shall not bear the heading ‘EC vehicle approval’.
An individual approval certificate shall bear the vehicle identification number of the vehicle concerned.
6.The validity of an individual approval shall be restricted to the territory of the Member State that granted the approval.
Where an applicant wishes to sell, register or put into service in another Member State a vehicle which has been granted an individual approval, the Member State that granted the approval shall, on request, provide the applicant with a statement of the technical provisions against which the vehicle was approved.
With regard to a vehicle which has been granted an individual approval by a Member State in accordance with the provisions of this Article, another Member State shall permit that vehicle to be sold, registered or to enter into service unless it has reasonable grounds to believe that the technical provisions against which the vehicle was approved are not equivalent to its own.
7.At the request of the manufacturer or of the owner of the vehicle, Member States shall grant an individual approval to a vehicle which complies with the provisions of this Directive and with the regulatory acts listed in Annex IV or Annex XI, as appropriate.
In such a case, Member States shall accept the individual approval and shall permit the sale, registration and entry into service of the vehicle.
8.The provisions of this Article may apply to vehicles which have been type-approved in accordance with this Directive and which have been modified before their first registration or entry into service.
1.The procedure set out in Article 24 may apply to a particular vehicle during the successive stages of its completion in accordance with a multi-stage type-approval procedure.
2.The procedure set out in Article 24 may not replace an intermediate stage within the normal sequence of a multi-stage type-approval procedure and may not apply for the purposes of obtaining the first-stage approval of a vehicle.
OJ L 138, 1.6.1999, p. 57. Directive as last amended by Directive 2006/103/EC (OJ L 363, 20.12.2006, p. 344).