Case C-526/15, Uber Belgium – facilitating a mobility service not a taxi service

Do occasional private car drivers who use Uber’s software and get paid to take people on journeys but who do not receive remuneration or a wage, provide a taxi service requiring a license?

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Case C-434/15, Asociación Profesional Élite Taxi – Uber’s new software destroys the old order of labour

Traditionally, people wanting to be driven from A to B could hail a cab on the street. Subsequently, cabs could be hailed by telephoning for one. Now it is possible to use a smartphone to organise an ‘electronic hail’. However, if the smartphone uses Uber’s software, then the car that comes to pick them up will not be a licensed taxi. The question is: can Uber’s new software destroy the old order of labour that governs the life of a taxi-driver, a legal order characterised by the state-licensing of taxi cabs?

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Case C-518/13, Eventech – driving a minicab through the rules governing bus lanes

London’s bus lanes can generally be used by ‘black cabs’ but not by ‘minicabs’. Do the rules underpinning that distinction: involve the use of state resources, constitute a disproportionate response in view of the policy aims of bus lanes, and threaten to affect trade between the Member States? If they do, then they could be an illegal state aid.

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