Your licence does not care what your trailer weighs, only what its plate says it could weigh
Two separate ceilings decide what you may hitch up, and clearing one of them proves nothing about the other
Every towing question in Europe has two answers, and both of them have to say yes. The first is your driving licence, governed since 19 January 2013 by the third driving licence directive, 2006/126/EC, which harmonised the categories across the EU and the wider European Economic Area. The second is your car, which the manufacturer type approved for a specific towing limit based on its brakes, its cooling, its structure and the strength of the mounting points behind the bumper. Those two limits are set by different people for different reasons and they almost never land on the same number. That is where the trouble starts. A driver reads 2,000 kg of towing capacity in the brochure, buys a caravan plated at 1,600 kg, and never discovers that the brochure answered the engineering question and said absolutely nothing about the licence question. It happens in the other direction too, with drivers who hold category BE hitching a heavy trailer to a car that was never rated to pull it. Neither ceiling forgives the other, an insurer looking for a reason to argue will find one in whichever you missed, and the officer at the roadside will check the paperwork rather than your intentions. Which brings us to the part that catches out the largest number of people by a distance, because the licence side of the sum is not measured the way anyone expects it to be.
The licence arithmetic uses the plate, not the weighbridge
Category B covers a car with a maximum authorised mass up to 3,500 kg, and it always allows a trailer of 750 kg or less behind it. Go above 750 kg on the trailer and category B still works, but only if the two masses added together come to 3,500 kg or less. Here is the detail that surprises people: both of those figures are maximum authorised masses, meaning the highest weight the vehicle is legally permitted to reach when fully loaded, as stamped on its manufacturer's plate. They are not what the vehicle weighs today. An empty garden trailer sitting at 180 kg on a weighbridge counts as 750 kg if 750 kg is what its plate says. A twin axle caravan plated at 1,600 kg counts as 1,600 kg even after you have carried every cushion, every bottle of water and the awning into the house. There is no version of this rule in which unloading helps you, and that single misunderstanding sits behind a large share of the towing offences written up in Europe. Now run the arithmetic that follows from it. A mid size family SUV is commonly plated somewhere around 2,400 to 2,600 kg, which leaves roughly 900 to 1,100 kg of trailer before the combined 3,500 kg ceiling arrives. Most family caravans are plated above that. The most ordinary towing sight on any European motorway, a large estate or an SUV with a caravan behind it, is for a great many drivers already outside a plain category B licence, and they have no idea.
Code 96 and category BE are different things, and only one of them needs a test
There are two ways past 3,500 kg and they are not interchangeable. Code 96 is not a new category at all. It is a numeric code printed beside the B on your licence, and it lifts the combined ceiling from 3,500 kg to 4,250 kg. In most member states you earn it through a short course of training and an assessment rather than a full driving test, which makes it the sensible and inexpensive route when your combination is only a few hundred kilos over the line. Category BE is the full entitlement: a category B towing vehicle plus a trailer with a maximum authorised mass up to 3,500 kg, giving a train weight of up to 7,000 kg, and it requires a practical test on the road. BE covers everything code 96 covers and a great deal more, so nobody has any reason to hold both, and if you are going to spend money on training it is worth asking whether the extra step is worth doing once. One warning before you assume you are already covered. Licences issued before the 2013 harmonisation were treated differently from one member state to the next, and some drivers were granted trailer entitlement automatically while others were not. Do not go on memory, and do not go on what a friend in another country tells you. Turn the card over and read the list of categories on the back with the dates printed beside each one. That list is the only thing anyone is going to look at.
Your car's own towing limit is printed on your registration document
The second ceiling belongs to the manufacturer, and European paperwork makes it findable, because the codes on the registration certificate were harmonised by directive 1999/37/EC and mean the same thing in every member state. O.1 is the maximum towable mass for a braked trailer. O.2 is the same figure for an unbraked one, and it is rarely more than 750 kg, because an unbraked trailer is stopped entirely by your car's brakes, which is also why many manufacturers set it at roughly half the car's kerb weight. F.1 is the technically permissible maximum laden mass of the car itself and F.2 is the maximum permitted in the country of registration, and it is F.1 you want for the licence sum above. Two further numbers do not appear on the registration document at all. The gross train weight lives on the manufacturer's plate in the door aperture or under the bonnet, and it caps the car and the trailer together as actually loaded, which means a car full of people and holiday luggage quietly eats into what you may hang off the back even when the trailer sits comfortably inside O.1. And the S value, stamped on the towbar's own plate, is the maximum vertical load allowed on the ball, usually between 50 and 100 kg. Noseweight is the thing that stops a caravan steering the car from behind, and too little of it is every bit as unstable as too much. Those code letters belong to a set, and the rest of them will tell you more about a used car than the seller does.
The speed limit changes at the border, and it is not the limit for your car
Attach a trailer and in most of Europe you stop being a car. Germany caps a car and trailer at 80 km/h, autobahn included, and the only way past that is the Tempo 100 approval, which requires the trailer to meet defined conditions on tyres, stabiliser and the weight ratio between trailer and car, and to be inspected before the sticker is issued. The Netherlands allows 90 km/h on the motorway. Other countries sit in between, and several drop the limit again once the combination passes 3,500 kg. There is no European harmonisation on this point at all, which means the number changes underneath you at a border you may well cross without stopping, and cross border enforcement of traffic fines means the ticket finds you at home weeks later. Look up every country on your route rather than the one you are going to. While you are there, check the mirror rule as well, because a caravan is almost always wider than the car pulling it and several countries require a genuine view down both sides rather than a hopeful one. It is the same category of homework as the vignettes and emission stickers that catch out more drivers than any speed limit does.
Electric cars can tow, but the numbers are smaller and so is the range
An EV's O.1 figure is often lower than that of a comparable combustion car, and a number of electric models are homologated with no towing rating whatsoever, because approving a car for towing costs money and manufacturers did not spend it everywhere. Where a rating does exist, the physics is unkind. A caravan is a large flat slab dragged through the air at motorway speed, aerodynamic drag dominates energy use above roughly 80 km/h, and pulling one commonly costs something in the region of half your range. Plan for charging roughly twice as often, and for the more irritating practical problem that almost no public charging bay in Europe is drive through, so you will be unhitching in car parks and hitching up again afterwards in the rain. Arriving at a charger with a cold pack turns a short stop into a long one, which is why preconditioning matters more on a towing trip than on any other kind of journey.
What the revised EU licence directive changes, and what it leaves exactly alone
The EU agreed a revision of the driving licence directive in 2025, and the headline for towing households is that the category B ceiling rises to 4,250 kg for motorhomes, conditional on the driver having held the licence for at least two years and completing training or a test, with an easier path for zero emission and alternatively fuelled vehicles where the extra mass comes from the drivetrain rather than the payload. Member states have four years from adoption to write it into national law, so the date that matters to you is your own country's transposition date and not the European one, and nothing printed on your licence changes before then. It is worth being equally clear about what the revision does not touch, because the reporting around it has been loose. The trailer rules are unchanged. The 750 kg step, the combined 3,500 kg ceiling for category B, code 96 at 4,250 kg and category BE at a 3,500 kg trailer all stay precisely where they are. If you were planning a caravan purchase around a rule change that will let your existing licence cover it, this is not that rule change.
What to actually do
This is a ten minute job with a torch and two documents, and it is far better done on the driveway than at a border.
Find the maximum authorised mass of your car. It is code F.1 on your registration document, and it is also stamped on the manufacturer's plate in the door aperture or under the bonnet.
Find the maximum authorised mass of the trailer. It is on the trailer's own plate, usually riveted to the drawbar or the A frame. Use that number and not the weight of what you intend to put in it.
Add the two together. At 3,500 kg or less, a plain category B licence covers you. Above it, you need code 96 up to 4,250 kg, or category BE beyond that.
Read the categories actually printed on the back of your licence, with the dates beside them, before you assume you already hold BE from an older licence.
Check O.1 on the registration document for the braked towing limit and O.2 for the unbraked one. Being inside your licence entitlement says nothing about being inside the car's.
Find the gross train weight on the manufacturer's plate and subtract everything going into the car. Four adults, luggage and a full tank can be 400 kg of it.
Read the S value on the towbar plate and measure the actual noseweight with a gauge, or with bathroom scales and a length of timber. Aim near the maximum rather than well under it.
Load the heavy items low and over the trailer's axle, never at the back. Weight behind the axle is what starts a snake at speed.
Check the date codes on the trailer's tyres, because trailer tyres almost always age out long before they wear out.
Look up the towing speed limit and the mirror requirement for every country on your route, not just the destination.
One more thing worth rehearsing before the holiday rather than during it, since a loaded combination behaves nothing like a car on a long descent: how to come down a mountain pass without cooking your brakes. And while you are inspecting the trailer, the four digit code on the sidewall tells you how old those tyres really are.
Frequently asked questions
Can I tow a big trailer if I only put a little in it?
No, and this is the single most common misunderstanding in European towing. Your licence entitlement is measured against the trailer's maximum authorised mass, the figure on its plate, which is the most it is ever permitted to weigh rather than what it weighs on the day. A trailer plated at 1,500 kg counts as 1,500 kg whether it is loaded to the roof or completely empty. The same applies to your car, where the relevant figure is F.1 on the registration document rather than the kerb weight. If the sum of the two plates exceeds 3,500 kg, no amount of leaving things at home will bring you back inside a plain category B licence. The only fix is a different trailer, a different car, or a different licence.
What is the difference between code 96 and category BE?
Code 96 is an extension to the licence you already hold. It appears as a number printed beside your B, it raises the combined ceiling from 3,500 kg to 4,250 kg, and in most member states it is granted after a short training course and an assessment rather than a full road test. Category BE is a separate entitlement obtained by passing a practical driving test, and it allows a trailer with a maximum authorised mass up to 3,500 kg behind a category B vehicle, for a train weight of up to 7,000 kg. BE includes everything code 96 allows, so holding both is pointless. If your combination is only slightly over 3,500 kg, code 96 is the cheaper answer. If you are anywhere near 4,250 kg, or you expect to tow heavier things later, BE is the one that will not need doing twice.
The brochure says my car can tow 2,000 kg. Is that what I am allowed to tow?
That figure is the engineering limit, not the legal one, and it answers only half the question. It corresponds to O.1 on your registration document, the maximum braked trailer mass the manufacturer approved for the chassis, the brakes and the mounting points. Your licence imposes an entirely separate ceiling based on the plated masses of car and trailer added together. A car rated to tow 2,000 kg and plated at 2,500 kg gives a combination of 4,500 kg, which is beyond category B and beyond code 96, and needs category BE. Both limits apply at the same time and you have to satisfy the lower of the two. Also remember the gross train weight on the manufacturer's plate, which can bite when the car itself is fully loaded.
Does my car insurance cover the trailer?
Partly, and the gap is bigger than most people expect. In most of Europe the towing vehicle's compulsory third party liability cover extends to the trailer while it is coupled, so damage the caravan does to somebody else is dealt with by the car's policy. Damage to the caravan itself, and to everything inside it, is almost always a separate matter, which is why caravans and expensive trailers are normally insured on their own policy. Theft while parked and damage while the trailer is uncoupled are the two situations where people most often discover they had no cover at all. And if the combination turns out to have been over a legal limit, expect that to feature in the conversation about the claim.
Does my entitlement change when I cross a border?
Your licence travels with you, because EU and EEA member states recognise each other's categories, so the B, the code 96 or the BE printed on your card means the same thing in every one of them. What does not travel is everything around it. Speed limits for a car with a trailer are set nationally and vary widely, mirror and equipment requirements differ, and a handful of countries have their own rules about trailer registration and separate plates once a trailer passes a certain mass. The licence question is the one that is settled Europe wide. Every other towing question is answered country by country.
What about a British licence after the UK changed its towing rules?
Since 16 December 2021, a Great Britain category B licence has allowed towing a trailer up to 3,500 kg maximum authorised mass, for a train weight of up to 7,000 kg, and the B plus E test was withdrawn. The entitlement is granted automatically, but the BE category is only added to the physical card when the licence is next renewed or replaced. That gap matters abroad, because what an officer in another country checks is the list of categories printed on the card in front of them rather than a British rule change they have no reason to know about. If you tow in Europe on a GB licence and BE is not yet showing on the back, it is worth getting the card updated before the trip rather than explaining the point at the roadside.
