Decree of Necessity and Urgency No. 70/2023 – Basis for the Reconstruction of the Argentine Economy (“DNU”) includes amendments to Decree-Law No. 6582/58 ratified by Law No. 14467 (t.o. 1997) and amendments to it (“Motor Vehicle Regime”), in relation to the motor vehicle registration.
These changes are intended to implement a remote, open, standardized and accessible registry, which the National Direction of the National Registry of Motor Vehicle Ownership and Pledged Credits (“DNRPA” after its acronym in Spanish) must operationalize by May 2, 2024 at the latest.
Sections repealed by the DNU
Sections 11, 12 and 21 of the Motor Vehicle Regime are repealed. The first of these provided that the place of registration of the motor vehicle was the domicile of the owner of the vehicle or the place where it was usually kept. In turn, Section 12 regulated the procedure for requesting a change in the place of registration of the motor vehicle. Finally, Section 21 mentioned the reasons for which the DNRPA was authorized to issue a duplicate of the title of the motor vehicle, indicating the reason for the duplicate and retaining the unused copy.
Sections amended by the DNU
The main changes are the following:
- The 3rd paragraph of Section 6 of the Automobile Regime is replaced, by adding that the title of the motor vehicle may have either physical or digital format.
- The 4th paragraph of Section 7 is replaced, establishing that the DNRPA shall create a “remote, open, standardized and accessible registration service” for the pertinent registrations and annotations. This registration system will be under national jurisdiction and the DNRPA will have to obtain the necessary information for the operation of this registry, both for vehicles already registered and for new vehicles to be registered.
- Section 8 is replaced in order to establish that the control of the operation of the local registries will be in charge of the DNRPA and that the registry of the copies of registrable instruments will be electronic and of public access.
- Section 9 is mainly modified by including that the registration or transfer of ownership of motor vehicles cannot be restricted, except for what concerns the registration fee. In any case, the existence of debts for fines or patents will not prevent the registration or transfer.
- Section 13 is amended to add that the procedures before the DNRPA shall be carried out through the use of template forms which may be of an electronic format.
- The title of ownership of the motor vehicle must be presented in order to register the transfer contracts. Section 14 includes that it could be presented either in physical or digital format.
- It is added to Section 19 that the annotation of endorsements of pledge contracts may be carried at any local registry or through DNRPA’s remote registration service.
- New Section 22 provides that the vehicle identification cards will be delivered digitally and will have the same validity as the physical ones.
- Pursuant to the amendment of Section 23, the identification cards will not expire as long as there are no changes in the ownership of the vehicle.
- The amendment to paragraph 5 of Section 27 reinforces that the legal obligations and liabilities of the transferring owner shall be extinguished as from the date of the report of the transfer of the motor vehicle.
In view of the omission of the DNU to indicate its entry into force date, it should be noted that it will apply the provisions of Article 5 of the Civil and Commercial Code, which establishes that laws become effective after the 8th day of their official publication. In this case, the DNU was published on December 21, 2023, therefore, it will become effective on December 30, 2023.
