It's technically called ride sharing, and in the United States it is already a solid reality: millions of users have already downloaded the app Uber, replacing the traditional taxi service and yielding to the startup founded in San Francisco in 2010 an annual turnover estimated at 2 billion dollars and a value now close to 40 billion.
But while Uber is now present in 250 cities in 50 countries around the world, in Europe the service is struggling to take off (there is in 48 cities in 22 countries, considering Turkey and Russia), by virtue of the resistance of many states: especially France, where the service UberPop (the one more similar to taxis, which differs from the rental of luxury cars) has been banned this year and also in Germany and Denmark, where it is encountering hostile sentences. In Italy, the resistance of taxi drivers has so far prevented national regulation, allowing the service on a case-by-case basis in some cities, depending on the choices of the Municipalities. But according to reports from the Financial Times (even if the news has not been confirmed by Brussels) the tide is about to change: the definitive go-ahead for the car service with driver via app could come from the European Union, then forcing all countries to adjust in some way.
According to rumors collected by the financial newspaper in Brussels over the Easter weekend, the European Commission is in fact evaluating the possibility of regulate Uber at the community level, bypassing national regulations, hitherto uncertain and contradictory. The intervention of the EU would cut the head off the administrative and judicial tangle in which the whole matter is becoming entangled, allowing Uber to operate but above all establishing certain rules to which cars with drivers contacted via the app should abide, albeit in the scope for general liberalisation.
In any case, the battle is far from over, given that the Financial Times itself a few months ago revealed that the first stop for Uber has arrived even in the USA: it happened at the end of November in Nevada, where for the first time the San Francisco company received a preliminary injunction in an entire state. It will therefore have to completely suspend its activities until a decision to the contrary, remaining legalized in 47 out of 50 states, even if the service has come under investigation in Los Angeles and in San Francisco itself, and even in New York there is tide. At the moment Uber is it has already been banned, albeit for different reasons, in New Delhi (after the rape of a woman) and in Thailand, Holland and Spain. Even in Australia, a country culturally close to the USA, is banned in five out of six provinces.
