The EU deals a heavy blow to Uber: "it is a transport company"

The European Court of Justice has sided with taxi drivers and ruled against Uber, stating that it is a transport company and not a services provider.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that Uber is a transport company and not a simple technology platform. With this ruling, the judicial body sides with the taxi sector and will begin to apply new requirements to the American company so that it may continue providing its services. “Its activity is inseparably linked to a transport service,” so the judges of the European Court stated in what amounts to a heavy setback for the carsharing company.

The main Uber service to be affected is the one known as UberPop, a form of carsharing through which private individuals without a taxi licence could offer their transport services to potential customers via an app. Until now, it was unclear whether the service complied with the specific regulations for the transport sector, but with the ruling of the European Court of Justice, Uber loses any opportunity to relaunch this model, which to date was only available in four European countries: the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

This is the statement from the Court of Justice of the EU on the matter:

“An intermediation service such as the one offered by Uber aims to connect, by means of a smartphone application and in return for remuneration, non-professional drivers who use their own vehicle with people in order to offer an urban journey, is inseparably linked to a transport service. Therefore, the Uber service must be classified as such, and not within the category of information society services in general or of e-commerce, subject to fewer requirements. In the current state of Union law, it is for the Member States to regulate the conditions for providing these services, provided that the general rules of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union are respected,” the Court states.

You can also read: “Warning! Uber charges a passenger 12,000 euros for a 20-minute journey“