Catalan taxi drivers are coming out unscathed from their last battle against the big digital platforms, against Cabify, Uber, Bolt... The final armistice is still far away, surely the taxi war will continue in the courts, but the winner of the last foray seems clear for now.
The Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday a royal decree-law that recognizes the public service nature of the taxi and makes it easier for the autonomous communities to regulate the activity of rental cars with drivers, also known as VTC. In this way, the regional governments, including that of Catalonia, will be able to continue doing what they have been doing up to now, but they will have to argue otherwise.
The central government thus tries to adapt the regulatory framework to the recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which questions whether administrations can limit the operation of VTCs, especially if they do so to ensure the economic viability of the cab. The new decree law establishes that the restrictions must be based on criteria related to the protection of the environment and the improvement of urban mobility.
This initiative is also the result of negotiations between the Ministry of Transport and Catalan taxi drivers. Just a couple of weeks ago, Elite Taxi, the main association of drivers in the Barcelona metropolitan area, after symbolically taking Gran Via one morning, made it clear that if the central government did not stop the liberalizing wave of the European ruling, it would redouble their mobilizations until the day of the general elections. Representatives of this portfolio and of this group held at least two meetings these days.
“We are very satisfied taking into account the context of the elections and the impact of the sentence,” says Alberto Álvarez, alias Tito, from Élite Taxi. There are nuances that we would have liked to improve, but we cannot hide the fact that it is a blow to those who make the transport business a niche for speculation and labor exploitation, for those who do not share any general interest, for those who only want to abuse the consumer and eliminate the cab".
The VTC employers, the owners of this type of licenses and the fleets of vehicles that work with the best-known apps, also tried to pressure the executive, although in a more hidden way. And, shortly after Vice President Nadia Calviño gave the usual press conference after the Council of Ministers, Feneval and Unauto, the main associations in the sector, announced that they will transfer this royal decree law to the European Commission and that they will request the opening of a proceedings against the Government of Spain.
The position of these associations is usually close to that of the digital platforms. What happens is that employers tend to be louder than multinationals, usually more discreet. The owners of the licenses and the fleets stress that the measure contradicts the CJEU ruling, that mobility regulations must protect the general interest, that the viability of the taxi is not part of the general interest... And they add that the Central government is resorting to an express regulation, negotiating with the taxi instead of doing it with the representatives of the sector that it intends to regulate. "All this in the middle of the electoral campaign, with the undisguised objective of currying favor with the taxi and avoiding massive mobilizations."
The taxi war armistice is still far away.
