An empty space where you left a hire car is almost always a tow, not a theft. Proving which one takes about five minutes, and those five minutes are worth money: storage runs by the day in most of Europe and by the hour in Barcelona.
The first five minutes
Read the kerb before you read your phone. Whatever moved the car had to be legal, and the thing that made it legal is usually still standing: a temporary no-parking board with dates on it, a cleaning morning, a small tow-truck pictogram bolted under the sign you did not look at.
Then check the plate. How you do that depends on the country.
France runs a national search. The interior ministry's Ma Sécurité portal covers more than 1,100 pounds; you type the plate and it tells you where the car is. Paris, Bordeaux and Toulouse are outside it. Paris has its own plate search at oemv-fourrieres.paris.fr; in Bordeaux and Toulouse you go to a police station in person.
Italy has nothing national. Venice's Polizia Locale sticks a yellow label in plain view carrying the plate and the name of the depot holding the car. Florence runs a plate search of its own and answers the pound's phone. Rome does neither, so you ring the police.
Spain: Barcelona's own site, gruamunicipal.ajuntament.barcelona.cat, takes a plate and names which of five pounds has the car.
The Netherlands and Austria publish no lookup at all. Amsterdam and Vienna are both phone calls.
If no system knows your plate and the kerb has no sign, treat it as stolen: report it to the police, and if it is a hire car, ring the rental desk while you are still standing there. They can see the tracker on many fleets.
When there is no sticker, ring the right police
Not 112. The number you want is the municipal force that ordered the tow — Police Municipale, Polizia Locale, Guàrdia Urbana — and in several cities its operations room is the only place that knows which contractor took the car. Rome is the clearest case: no single pound, several contracted depots, some of them a long way out and not on a bus route. I would not set off across a city until somebody has said a depot name out loud.
What you must bring
Passport or ID card, driving licence, the vehicle registration document, proof of insurance. Originals: Paris and Barcelona both say so in writing, and a photo on your phone is not a document.
The hire car is where this gets awkward. The registered keeper is the rental company, not you, and pounds release cars to the owner or to somebody the owner has authorised. Barcelona wants the rental agreement as an original or a certified copy. Florence has you sign a declaration that you are entitled to the car. Rome's depots hand the car to the owner or their nominee, which in practice means the rental company has to say yes first. My rule is to phone the rental desk before I phone a taxi, because a taxi to a depot in the wrong suburb is an expensive way to be told no.
Three bills, not one
The removal fee is a one-off. Storage is a clock. The parking fine is a separate piece of paper that may not even be at the pound, and the classic mistake is walking out of the pound believing you have settled everything when you have settled two of the three. I count them off on my fingers.
France caps the first two nationally: since 1 March 2024 a car is €127.65 to remove and €6.75 a day to store, with €15.20 if the truck was called and the car moved before it was hooked up. Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse run their own, higher scale — Paris is €179 for the first day, then €29. Vienna is €301 plus €11 a day. Amsterdam is the one that makes people sit down: €484 for the first 24 hours or any part of them, then €10 for each further day, set by city regulation for 2026. The I amsterdam tourist site still prints the old €452 and €9, so do not budget from it.
How you pay is not uniform either. Amsterdam takes cards only, no cash. Paris caps cash at €300. Vienna takes cash, Bankomat or credit card. Barcelona lets you pay online and gives you four extra free hours for doing it, unless the tow was for something other than parking, in which case the online route is closed.
Who to call, city by city
Numbers here come from our own city pages; where a city publishes nothing, this says so rather than guessing.
| City | Who to call | Where the car goes | What it costs |
|---|
| Paris | 3975, French networks only | Five préfourrières; plate search at oemv-fourrieres.paris.fr | €179 first day, then €29/day |
| Nice | Police Municipale +33 4 93 53 53 53 | Fourrière de Nice, 61 avenue Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Nice | National caps: €127.65 + €6.75/day. Nice publishes no list |
| Monaco | Police +377 93 15 30 15, 24h | Pay at Place du Campanin, Fontvieille, Monaco first — collect at Parking des écoles | €200 + €30/day |
| Barcelona | +34 937 06 52 50 | Five dipòsits, all 24h; the site names yours | €173 + €2.50/h (first 4h free), €25/day |
| Rome | Polizia Locale +39 06 67691, 24h | Contracted depots, no single city pound | Not published |
| Florence | Pound +39 055 422 4142 | Depositeria comunale, Via Salvador Allende 18, Firenze — Novoli | €20 + €26 + €4/km + €15/day, +30% at night |
| Venice | Polizia Locale +39 041 274 7070 | The depot named on the yellow sticker | Not published |
| Amsterdam | City line +31 20 624 1111 | Autopound, Daniël Goedkoopstraat 5-9, Amsterdam — out east | €484 first 24h, then €10/day |
| Vienna | MA 48 +43 1 760 43 | Jedletzbergerstrasse 1, 1110 Wien — Simmering | €301 + €11/day |
If you fly home without the car
The clock does not stop, and neither does the ownership question. In France the car is treated as abandoned 15 days after you are notified and goes to the state property service to be sold or destroyed; a car already classed for destruction goes in 10. Barcelona counts a vehicle as abandoned after 60 days. Vienna keeps a car with plates for six months, after which it becomes city property and is scrapped. Amsterdam simply keeps charging €10 a day.
On a hire car it is not really your decision. The rental company owns the vehicle, will collect it, and will bill you for the pound fees, its own recovery costs and the days the car was off fleet. That bill is open-ended in a way the pound's tariff is not.
How a fine follows you home
The EU instrument everybody half-remembers is Directive (EU) 2015/413, on cross-border exchange of information about road-safety offences. It covers eight things: speeding, seatbelts, red lights, drink-driving, drugs, helmets, using a forbidden lane, and phone use at the wheel. Parking is not on that list and never has been. What the directive does is let one country ask another for the keeper's details and post a notice; it does not itself collect anything.
The 2024 revision, Directive (EU) 2024/3237, in force since 19 January 2025 and to be transposed by member states by 20 July 2027, widens the list: hit-and-run, wrong-way driving, level-crossing offences, breaches of vehicle access restrictions — and "dangerous parking or stopping". Before anyone reads that as parking tickets going EU-wide, Article 3 says in terms that failure to pay parking fees and similar offences is not dangerous parking or stopping. An overstayed meter stays out. The revision also gives you a deadline in your favour — the notice must be issued no later than 11 months after the offence — and limits cross-border enforcement assistance to fines above €70.
Actually collecting an unpaid fine runs on a different track, Framework Decision 2005/214/JHA on mutual recognition of financial penalties. Road traffic offences are inside it, and a country may refuse to enforce anything under €70. That threshold is why a €40 parking ticket from an Italian comune rarely arrives as a court order and often arrives as a letter from a debt collection agency instead.
The hire car shortens all of it, and the fines and tolls guide goes through the paperwork end of it properly. The company is the keeper, gets the notice, names you from the rental agreement and adds a handling charge — Sixt's own UK help centre puts its fee at £40 a fine. Italy can serve a notice on someone living abroad up to 360 days after the event, and the clock on a rental only starts once the company has named you. I pay these the week they land. The fine is fixed; the arguing is not.