Hi Paul:

I have left my Canadian-plated motorcycle in Europe for many years.

Having said that, though, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to ship a Canadian automobile or light truck over to Europe.

Motorcycles tend to be highly personalized vehicles (meaning, the owner makes many small modifications after buying it), unless your light truck has been extensively modified into a camping vehicle or similar, there's no great benefit to shipping the truck over.

You have Portuguese citizenship, right of residence in the EC, & presumably speak Portuguese - one of the reasons that moto riders from outside Europe ship their bikes into Europe is because they can't easily purchase, register, and insure a locally bought bike. You don't face any of those problems.

You are, however, at greater risk of being punished if the Portuguese authorities find out that you, a citizen & putative resident, have smuggled a vehicle into Portugal and have avoided paying import duties and taxes by representing it as being a tourist vehicle. That's really what your proposal boils down to.

At least if a non-EC citizen and non-EC resident gets caught keeping their tourist vehicle in the EC for more than the 6 months permitted, that person will probably just get reprimanded and told to export the vehicle, "now".

I once loaned my Canadian-plated bike to a friend of mine, a citizen and resident of the EC, to use for a weekend. He got stopped in a spot check, and had to pay a fine equal to double the import duty on my motorcycle! That was over 1,000 Euros, and that took place over 10 years ago.

The whole idea behind the permission to temporarily import a vehicle that is a legitimate "tourist vehicle" into the EC is to allow legitimate "tourists" to tour around using their own vehicle. Because of your citizenship, your entitlement to residence, the fact that you already own a EC-registered vehicle, you are not a tourist. If caught, you would be considered to be a smuggler / tax evader, plain and simple.

I don't think it's worth the risk, especially considering how carefully you would be scrutinized by Customs authorities in the future whenever you entered the EC.

Michael