The Catalan taxi drivers emerge victorious from their last battle against the big digital platforms, against Cabify, Uber, Bolt... The definitive armistice is still far away, for sure the taxi war will continue in the courts, but the winner of the last flirt for now it seems clear.
Yesterday, the Council of Ministers approved a royal decree-law that recognizes the nature of taxis as a public service and makes it easier for the autonomous communities to regulate the activity of rental cars with a driver, 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 until now, but they will have to argue for it in a different way.
The Central Government is thus trying to adapt the regulatory framework to the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which questions whether the administrations can limit the operation of VTCs, especially if they do so to ensure the economic viability of the taxi . 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 the Ministry of Transport's negotiations with Catalan taxi drivers. It was just a couple of weeks ago that Élite Taxi, the main association of drivers in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, after symbolically taking the Gran Via one morning, made it clear that if the Central Government did not stop the liberalizing sling of the European ruling would redouble their mobilizations until the day of the general elections. Representatives of this portfolio and this group held at least two meetings these days.
"We are very satisfied considering the context of elections and the impact of the sentence - said Alberto Álvarez, alias Tito, of Élite Taxi-. There are nuances that we would have liked to improve, but we cannot hide that it is a blow for 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 taxi".
The employers of the VTC, the owners of this type of license and the fleets of vehicles that work with the best-known apps, also tried to pressure the Executive, but in a more underground way. And yesterday, shortly after Vice President Nadia Calviño held 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 only · they will request the opening of a procedure against the Government of Spain.
The position of these associations is usually close to that of digital platforms. What happens is that employers are usually noisier than multinationals, usually more discreet. License and fleet owners stressed that the move contradicts the ECJ ruling, that mobility regulations must protect the general interest, that taxi viability is not part of the general interest... And they emphasized that the central government has resorted to express regulation, negotiating with the taxi instead of doing it with the representatives of the sector it aims to regulate. "All this in the middle of the election campaign, with the undisguised aim of winning the favor of the taxi and avoiding mass mobilizations", they added.
The armistice of the taxi war is still far away.
