"Scrapping of Licenses". These three words seem to be the only ones potentially capable of unblocking the stalemate on taxis. Last week's agreement between unions and the government served to end the wildcat strike by taxi drivers, but it was only a first step. Today, Tuesday 28 February, we start again: at 10 a technical roundtable is set up at the Ministry of Transport with all the taxi and NCC associations (rental with driver). Mise technicians will also participate in the meeting, while Uber representatives or consumer associations will not be present.
THE THOUSAND EXTENSION AND THE PROTESTS
Let us try to put order on the terms of the question starting from the beginning. On Thursday 16 February the taxi drivers began six days of strikes and protests (sometimes violent) to challenge a law approved with the Milleproroghe decree. This is an amendment signed by Senator Pd Linda Lanzillotta which postpones the regulation of Nccs and the rules against unauthorized use for another year, to December 31, 2017. The plan has continued to slip since 2009, in the absence of the implementing decrees.
THE TWO MEASURES IN THE SITE
The tension has decreased thanks to the mediation of the Minister of Transport, Graziano Delrio, who last week reached an initial agreement with 21 taxi drivers' unions. The agreement provided for the immediate interruption of the lockout in exchange for the commitment to launch an inter-ministerial decree against the squatters within 30 days and subsequently an organic intervention in the field of Ncc.
THE (POSSIBLE) NEWS COMING SOON FOR NCC
Basically, the government could satisfy taxi drivers on two points, by introducing new restrictions for black car rental with driver.
1) In Municipalities where a taxi service is active, NCCs will no longer be able to stop in normal street parking lots to wait for the next reservation, but at the end of each ride they will have to return to their garage.
2) The remittances must be in the territory of the Municipality that issued the authorization to the Ncc. "If one has a license in a small town in the Marche region and then works all day in Milan, I wonder if it's competition or unfair competition," Delrio told Corriere della Sera.
In reality, these rules are already provided for by law 21 of 1992, but no one has ever applied them rigidly. Dusting off the old rules, however, will not be enough, because in the meantime the Council of State and the Antitrust have established that law 21 does not apply to technology platforms. It therefore remains outside the perimeter of Uber, which offers its service using the NCC formula.
THE LICENSE KNOB
The government must find a balance between two needs: not to block the American app and at the same time protect taxi drivers also in terms of licenses. This is another hot topic, because the numbers involved are high. Each permit is worth between 150 and 200 thousand euros on the markets of Rome and Milan, while in Florence it reaches 350 thousand euros and in Venice it rises up to 400 thousand. A value closely connected to the fact that the market is closed and non-competitive. On the other hand, when they retire, taxi drivers sell their license, which therefore has the value of a severance pay for them. However, the arrival of Uber on the market has begun to bring down the value of these permits.
To get out of the spiral, the government could opt for the scrapping route. In this way, taxi drivers would be allowed to return their licenses to the bodies that issued them, obtaining monetary compensation in exchange. Such a measure was already adopted in the late XNUMXs to liberalize trade. At the time, however, there was no Brussels to supervise public finances.
