Law and permits

Licence revocation can be delayed: courts do not notify the police of judgments automatically

5 November 2026 · Taksiuutiset editorial team

According to Yle, Traficom grants a taxi driver licence for five years, but information on a judgment does not pass from the court to the police automatically. Police departments typically ask for judgments a few times a year.

Note: The training is given in Finnish, and the taxi driver exam is held only in Finnish or Swedish (Traficom regulation, section 3), with no interpreter or dictionary allowed.

Who grants the licence and what is required

According to Yle, Traficom grants and renews taxi driver licences for five years at a time. Before that, the agency checks that the applicant has no final prison sentences in the criminal record for the past five years. Yle mentions sexual offences as an example of an obstacle to getting a licence.

How supervision works

The task of the police is to supervise that drivers do not, during the validity of the licence, commit offences that would prevent them from working in the profession. Yle reports that by law the police should revoke the driver licence, but information on a judgment does not pass to the police automatically.

According to Chief Superintendent Mikko Porvali, courts do not automatically notify the police of a judgment in which the defendant is a taxi licence holder. Police departments follow judgments by asking courts for them, typically a few times a year. Porvali says that the police have no direct right to query the prosecutor's and the court's systems.

Revocation restricts the practice of a trade, so the police must proceed in the lawful order and hear the driver. According to Porvali, the process takes at least two months. According to him, a licence can be revoked already during a pre-trial investigation only if there is concrete evidence of the suspected guilt.

What this means for you

• A driver licence is valid for five years, and the police supervise the fulfilment of the conditions during the licence.
• Yle writes that if the police do not notice a judgment that bars the licence, a driver can in principle drive for up to five years before anything happens.
• According to the National Police Board, the problem is known and solutions are being developed for it. It did not give details, so it is not known when or how the practice will change.
• The list of offences that bar a driver licence became wider on 1 September 2026 (Act 612/2026). The changes are collected in the article New taxi act 2026: all the changes on one page.

The article is based on an inquiry by Svenska Yle, which Yle published on 14 September 2026. The police's practices may have changed since. The article does not tell about individual cases.