Madrid (EFE) demonstration that will take place next Thursday, if its stability is not assured.
Taxi drivers have once again seen their interests threatened, after the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rejected on June 8 the limitation of the number of VTC licenses (used by platforms such as Uber, Cabify or Bolt) to one for every 30 taxis in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), and they have asked the Government for “urgent regulation to guarantee balanced urban mobility”.
CJEU ruling
According to the European ruling, this limitation is not justified by any compelling reason of general interest, since what it seeks is to guarantee the viability of taxi services, something that is purely economic in nature.
The CJEU ruling resolves a request for a preliminary ruling filed by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, which had doubts about the validity of a state regulation of the AMB that, in addition to the 1/30 ratio, required obtaining additional municipal authorization to the national to provide VTC services in Barcelona.
On this last point, the ruling admits that an extra license “may be necessary” for the good management of transport, traffic and public space, as well as for the protection of the environment.
Therefore, although the illegality of the 1/30 ratio opens the door to the request for thousands of authorizations, the real number of VTCs that will be able to operate in the cities will depend on that second authorization established by the municipalities.
Risk of a barrage of licenses
The National Taxi Association (Antaxi) immediately warned that the possible interpretations of the CJEU ruling could lead to a flood of VTC authorizations (which amount to more than 130,000) that would be enabled to carry out urban services and threatened mobilizations, if the Mitma did not take action on it.
After meeting with the ministry and achieving its commitment to legislate on those thousands of requested VTCs, Antaxi decided to postpone the demonstration initially called for June 22 until next Thursday.
With no further meetings scheduled, according to Antaxi, “everything is now in the hands of the ministry”, which, for its part, has indicated that, among other points, “progress is being made to include measures to strengthen the fight against fraud and facilitate coexistence between the taxi and the VTC”.
However, the Mitma has stressed on several occasions that the framework of action of the General State Administration “can only include interurban transport and, therefore, in the urban area, it is the autonomous communities and town halls that must regulate the conditions for authorize the circulation of the VTC”.
“Ábalos Law”
With the royal decree-law of 2018, known as the “Ábalos Law”, in addition to raising the 1/30 ratio to the level of law, the autonomous communities and town halls were empowered to regulate VTC activity, creating their own rules for granting or denying new licences, with a transitional regime of four years (which ended last September), to adapt the legislation.
After that period, to compensate for the damages that could be caused to the holders of the VTCs granted in accordance with the previous regulations and that could be annulled to respect the 1/30 ratio, the state-level authorizations would only be authorized to provide interurban services.
Meeting with the VTC sector
Considering themselves excluded from the negotiations between Mitma and the taxi, the employers of VTC, Feneval and Unauto, have asked the European Commission to intercede with the Spanish Government, which is trying, in their opinion, to approve “an urgent regulation to avoid the Tribunal”, just before the general elections on July 23.
The Government “is working on a royal decree-law that, in accordance with the Spanish Constitution, could not be challenged in court directly by individuals, companies or competition authorities, thus leaving the VTC sector in a clear situation of defenselessness”, they detail in a letter sent at the beginning of last week to the European Commissioner for Transport, Adina Vălean.
“Such a law would have the objective of mitigating the effects of the CJEU ruling, either directly, or by allowing the Spanish regional and municipal authorities to do so,” they add in their letter.
Finally, last Friday, the ministry held a meeting with both associations, during which, “a shared vision on the validity of the coexistence framework between the taxi and VTC existing in Spain was revealed, without prejudice to possible evolutions in based on what was determined by the CJEU and the reinforcement of the framework for its effective control”, according to Mitma.