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Why taxi drivers protest (again) against Uber

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Why taxi drivers protest (again) against Uber

It is not clear the reason for the new protest of the taxi drivers against Uber. But one aspect seems to be quite evident: what is taking place all over Italy has the contours of a preventive protest. To understand this, just go through the competition bill. To read the text there does not seem to be much that directly concerns public transport apps such as those of the service that arrived in Italy in 2013. But in reality the fear of the representatives of the category concerns a possible consequence of the law.

The fear that Palazzo Chigi could intervene on public transport and the spectrum Uber files

In fact, the text gives the government the opportunity to take the reins of public transport legislation. And the risk, for taxi drivers, is that the executive could definitively open up to services such as that offered by Uber and Lyft. Not that it has ever been said or feared. In other words: taxi drivers do not trust Palazzo Chigi. They fear that the presidency of the Council of Ministers could be influenced by Uber.

A fear exacerbated, or perhaps used instrumentally, after the outbreak of the Uber files case, the documents published by the Guardian last week that told of unscrupulous lobbying practices by the Californian giant on Western governments in recent years. Gasoline in the forge of the protests in via del Corso.

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Taxi drivers do not trust Palazzo Chigi, it was said. But they trust Parliament. Or rather, they trust the political parties, more attentive to their electoral base, which not surprisingly in these hours launch statements to the press agencies in which they accuse Uber and warn the executive not to listen to the moments of society. How much the Uber files play as a pretext is difficult to say. But during the protest, the taxi drivers directed chants above all against the Californian app and the prime minister, Mario Draghi.

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The issue of licenses and the risk of liberalization

But in addition to Uber, the competition bill is seen as a threat to licenses, which taxi drivers have paid dearly for and do not want to see depreciated by a liberalized market, which would push their value down.

Today taxi drivers, by law, can decide who to transfer their license to by reporting a name to the municipality. At the moment there are about 40 thousand in Italy, and their price reaches 170 thousand euros in cities like Rome and Milan.

This has created over the years what many denounce as a thriving internal market for licenses, which the liberalization of the sector and an intervention on the number of licenses available could hinder by lowering the average purchase price.

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Yet only six weeks ago Uber and the It-Taxi radio taxi consortium had buried the hatchet by announcing an integration of services. It was May 24, the integration had to take place by June, starting with Rome.

Reading the statements from those days today has a certain effect: “We are excited to start a new chapter of trust and cooperation, because we firmly believe that Uber and Taxi are better together”, he said. Lorenzo Piredduhead of Uber Italy.

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Statements in harmony with those of the president of It-Taxi, Loreno Bittarelliwho on Twitter after a meeting with the CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahihe wrote in English: “Sometimes it happens to meet to get to know each other and create opportunities and trust. We have created the conditions for this to happen, working together with a sense of responsibility to reach new horizons and a customer-oriented mentality”.

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But at the time of integration there is no trace. Sources explain to Italian Tech that everything is ready, that from a technical point of view the Uber cars could already be seen on the Roman taxi app, and vice versa. But these protests may have slowed everything down: peace is now less convenient. Consequently, it is not certain when, and especially if, integration will take place. This is the latest friction between the category of taxi drivers and the company that they see as a symbol of a new way of doing business on non-scheduled public transport.

What the text on competition provides

The text of the law that is the subject of the protest of the taxpayers provides for the possibility that the government may intervene (within six months from the approval of the law, in case of approval) for an “adaptation of the offer of services to the new forms of mobility that take place through applications websites that use technological platforms for the interconnection of passengers and drivers “.

In other words, Uber and the other platforms in the industry. The law would also give the government the possibility to push for the “promotion of competition, also in the granting of licenses, in order to stimulate higher quality standards”.

Removing obstacles, facilitating the plurality of service in order to improve the offer to customers is in the nature of a standard that aims to improve competition in a sector. But when it comes to non-scheduled public transport, things get complicated.

Uber in Italy: a brief history of the protests

In Italy it has been complicated for years. At least since 2008, the year in which taxi drivers began to protest in a more vibrant way against NCC, car rental services with driver.

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Uber had nothing to do with it then. Indeed, the company had not even been founded. But from that year onwards, protests from trade associations asking for the implementing decrees of a law that required competitors (NCCs) to return to remittances after each transport carried out were more and more frequent.

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This is a 1992 law that sets the stakes of action and the differences between taxi and NCC. The return to the remittance in fact forced the NCC to work only as a service by reservation. Then came the platform economy. The apps have arrived. And the picture got even more complicated with the arrival of Uber in Italy in 2013. Those implementing decrees were then approved in 2019, but within a few months they were declared illegitimate by the Constitutional Court. Point and start again.

Today’s protests also stem from the fact that in Italy Uber can operate as a car service with driver, but with limitations to the service that in fact do not equate neither it nor the other platforms to the work done by taxis. Today the taxi drivers unearthed the hatchet and declare a new battle at Uber. The explosion of paper bombs in via del Corso, in Rome, just one more element to understand how much tension immediately skyrocketed.

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