Attestation of activities form: is it still required?

The attestation of activities form is no longer mandatory. Art. 34(3) of Regulation (EU) 165/2014 prohibits Member States from requiring it. Leave, sickness and rest go on the driver card as manual entries. The form can still be used, voluntarily, when manual entry is technically impossible, and the Commission recommends that Member States accept it.

What the regulation says

One sentence does the work. Member States shall not impose on drivers a requirement to present forms attesting their activities while away from the vehicle. It sits in the second subparagraph of Art. 34(3) of Regulation 165/2014.

The first subparagraph of the same paragraph says what replaces the form. With a digital tachograph, periods of other work, availability and rest spent away from the vehicle are entered on the driver card using the manual entry facility. With an analogue tachograph they are written on the chart.

The form has also lost its footing in Directive 2006/22/EC. The original Art. 11(3) provided for an electronic and printable form drawn up by the Commission. In the text consolidated on 20 June 2024 that paragraph, replaced by Directive (EU) 2020/1057, talks about implementing acts on recording other work and periods of at least one week away from the vehicle. The form is gone from it.

What the Commission says

The European Commission reads the ban as a limit on Member States. It places no ban on drivers. In Clarification 7 it writes that Art. 34(3) “does not prohibit the use of such a form by drivers” who could not make a retroactive manual entry. On its form page it recommends that Member States accept the standard form when tachograph records are impossible for technical reasons.

It gives two examples: a first-generation digital tachograph that does not allow retroactive entry, and a long period of work outside the scope of the rules before returning to driving, when retroactive entry would be excessively burdensome.

Clarification 7 also says Member States should not penalise drivers for not having the form. A Commission note on Art. 8(8) of Regulation 561/2006 points the same way: roadside enforcers may ask where the regular weekly rest was taken, but cannot fine drivers for not showing documents on activities away from the vehicle, such as hotel bills.

Two caveats. Clarification 7 carries no date and was written before Art. 36 of Regulation 165/2014 applied: it still talks about 28 days of records on board, while since 31 December 2024 it is 56. And Commission notes are not binding. Interpretation of EU law is ultimately for the Court of Justice.

August holidays, a worked example

Anna drives a tractor unit with a smart tachograph. She is on holiday from Monday 3 August to Monday 17 August 2026 and back at work on Tuesday 18 August.

On Tuesday morning she inserts her card and, with a manual entry, records the two weeks of leave. No form. If she has none at a check at the end of August, the Commission says she should not be penalised. At a check at the end of August, her 56-day window of records on board includes those two weeks.

A different case. A colleague of Anna drives a vehicle with a first-generation digital tachograph that will not take a retroactive entry. For him the form is the tool the Commission points to for covering the gap, and the Commission recommends that Member States accept it.

Filling it in, if you use it

The model is the annex to Decision 2009/959/EU, which is addressed to the Member States. The Commission publishes it as a DOC file in English and other EU languages, dated 20 July 2021. The rules:

Rule	Source
Fill in every field, typed, and sign before the journey	Annex to Decision 2009/959/EU; Commission
The company representative signs (box 20) and so does the driver (box 22)	Annex; Commission
A self-employed driver signs twice, as company and as driver	Commission
The text cannot be modified; only the signed original is valid	Commission
It can be printed on letterhead, but the company fields are still filled in	Commission
Boxes 14 to 19 (sick leave, annual leave, leave or rest, excluded vehicle, other work, availability): tick only one	Annex, note (*)
Keep it with the original tachograph records	Annex

The form adds to the records. It never replaces them. False attestations constitute an infringement, as the annex itself says.

The form covers Regulation 561/2006 or the AETR, the European agreement on the work of crews of vehicles engaged in international road transport.

What to do

Teach drivers the manual entry on return: that is the tool the regulation asks for. Keep a blank copy of the official model only for vehicles whose tachograph cannot take retroactive entries. If you use it, fill it in completely and file the signed original with your tachograph downloads.

The rest rules that the form or the manual entry must prove are in our guide to EU driving hours rules. For a card that stops working there is the guide to a lost or faulty driver card, and for new vehicles the one on the smart tachograph version 2.

What this article does not cover. We do not cover national circulars on the form; an Italian circular from 2016 is quoted by trade sources, but we have not read its text from an official source. We have not checked whether the Commission has adopted the implementing acts provided for in Art. 11(3) of Directive 2006/22/EC, which could change the picture. We have not compared the 2021 DOC form with the annex to the decision, and we do not know whether the note on Art. 8(8) also covers checks at company premises.

The EU texts were read from the Publications Office repository, because EUR-Lex was not reachable on 15 November 2026: first in Italian, then checked against the English text.