Something is changing in the history of Uber: the app that allows anyone to give a ride in the car for a fee, for years doing unfair competition - in particular with the UberPOP service, according to what has been established by more than one court - with half the world's taxis , is increasingly with its back to the wall. Founded in 2009 in San Francisco by Travis Kalanick, the company now worth over $50 billion and preparing for a record IPO on Wall Street, has taken a major hit in France, where for the first time of its own accord – albeit after a week of violent clashes with the taxi drivers and the detention of the two managers of Uber France - decided, from 20 pm on Friday, to suspend the service.
The case this time is very different from the Italian one (and from other countries in Europe and the world, in some of which, however, the service continues to be carried out illegally), and is rather similar to that of Nevada, one of the US states which first blocked UberPOP, definitively: while in fact in Italy the suspension is temporary and was ordered by a Court (in the specific case that of Milan) while awaiting government intervention or – even better – a European regulation, in France the government has already chosen and it was Uber that had to appeal. The executive led by Manuel Valls has in fact banned the service (with the famous Thévenoud law) and while waiting for the French Constitutional Court to express itself on the legitimacy of the legislative intervention, UberPOP will no longer be accessible throughout the summer.
The decision of the Consulta is therefore expected for September, but in the meantime the Californian company has already thrown in the towel and sent a soothing signal to the French authorities, after a crazy week between real physical clashes with taxi drivers and the detention of the French CEO Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty and general manager Thibaud Simphal, both indicted (they too will be judged in September) for deceptive commercial practice, complicity in the abusive exercise of the profession of taxi driver and irregularities in the processing of computer data. It was Simphal himself who gave the news of the "ceasefire" on Friday, making not only the taxi drivers rejoice but also the transalpine premier Manuel Valls himself, who reiterated that “this profession needs rules, we don't follow the law of the jungle”.
Beyond Uber's decision and the harsh repression carried out in France in recent days (a specialized police department has also been authorized to hunt down Uber vehicles, with the right to seize the merchant's car and mobile phone), the debate remains still open. As pointed out the Green MEP Karima Delli in a brilliant intervention on Les Echos, “taken to the extreme, the Uber model would allow anyone to be an UberPOP driver on Mondays, to mow the grass in the neighbor's garden on Tuesdays, and to do – for example – school lessons on Wednesdays. Without legal status, without social protection or any pension provision, anyone would be 'free' to work 15 hours a day by selling themselves to the highest bidder. This is not a question of defending the incomes of taxi drivers, but of giving legal protection to the worker. What is the point of breaking down a monopoly to make room for another one, moreover made up of precarious jobs?”.
That the professional opportunity offered by Uber is precarious and often underpaid is a well-known story in America, where a Wall Street Journal investigation has denied the data provided by the company on how much its drivers earn: 90.000 dollars a year, it claimed Uber, less than 10 dollars an hour net of expenses, replies the timely investigation by the WSJ. "Many drivers are forced to do double duty", explains the newspaper. Not to mention consumer protection, which ends up below zero in the now sadly known episodes of rapes, robberies, kidnappings and above all surge pricing (soaring prices taking advantage of presumed particular situations, such as public holidays and bad weather), which is therefore not the prerogative of local "caxi drivers".
Despite this, consumers – or at least most of them – are on Uber's side. “It's really a sad day for i 500.000 French people using UberPOP”, writes Kalanick's company in the statement released on Friday. And he's not entirely wrong: users of the ride sharing service, present since 2014 in Paris and following suit in 8 other French cities, have actually increased tenfold in the last year. Even in Italy, the associations of Italian Consumer Network (Casa del Consumatore, Assoutenti e Codici) have decided to intervene before the Court of Milan to support Uber's request to be able to continue the UberPOP service. Choosing which side to take, with the taxi drivers or with those who exploit the application, were the users who participated quite consistently (over 143 responses) in the survey organized by the associations, published on 25 June: almost two-thirds of they (65%) voted “yes” to the question “Do we help Uber?”.
This is why MEP Delli does not want a definitive ban: “Banning Uber? That would be the worst solution. Valls doesn't want to do like Erdogan in Türkiye with Twitter? Or like China with Google? Prohibition has the sole effect of creating a dangerous parallel market. These technological revolutions are unstoppable, it is up to the legislator to read them in time and regulate them". In any case, it will be a long summer without Uber in France.
