Home / Proof Marks / C.I.P. marks generally — what membership means

C.I.P. marks generally — what membership means

Modern European proof (C.I.P.) · 1969 to today.
What it looks like
Marks in the house style of each member state, frequently accompanied by the C.I.P. monogram or letters, and often by a national proof-house device.
Where it is on the gun
Barrel, monobloc, frame, sometimes under the extractors.
Date range
1969 to today.

What it tells you

What this mark authorises you to say

A member state recognises every other member state’s proof marks as equivalent to its own. That is the whole point of the convention: a Czech-proved gun is legally proved in France, and a German-proved gun in Italy, without being retested at the border. The C.I.P. — the Commission Internationale Permanente pour l’Épreuve des Armes à Feu Portatives — sets the standards for safety testing of firearms outside the United States, and the Belgian government is the treaty holder. It has some sixteen member states.

What it does not tell you

What this mark does NOT say

It is not a consumer safety rating, and the letters do not tell you when the gun was made or in which country. Because every member state stamps its own house style, the same test looks completely different on an Italian, a German and a Czech gun — which is why the C.I.P. system looks inconsistent when it is in fact uniform.

Where the sources are uncertain

The membership list changes: published figures range from fourteen to sixteen states depending on the year, and the United Kingdom’s position was the subject of political change after 2016. Check the C.I.P. site rather than any list quoted in a forum post.

Sources for this page

Every claim above is attributed. The class of source is shown with each one, because a national proof house and an anonymous forum table are not the same evidence — and on proof marks the difference matters.

Reading marks to identify and date a gun

Proof marks name the test and the era. The serial number, where a maker published a browsable chart, can name the year. The lookup cites the threshold behind every result.

Open the serial number lookup

Other modern european proof (c.i.p.)

Mark descriptions observed and verified 2026-10-14. Proof marks are stamped by hand on guns up to a century old; a photographed stamp and a description in a book are not the same evidence. If a mark on your gun does not match anything here, that is a real answer — see the notes on unidentified marks.