The Hamburg taxi regulator has served a prohibition order to technology company Uber, but – for the moment – everything remained the same after the judges were done.
This case was reported by ‘Manager Magazin’, a leading German business publication. In Germany, a passenger transportation license (‘P-Schein’) is needed for paid transportation of passengers by taxi. Uber-drivers don’t usually posses such a licence, says ‘Manager Magazine’. The magazine cites an official representative of the licensing authority: „In our judgement, the service UberPOP is therefore clearly not an approved passenger transport. UberPOP is not legal.“
That’s why last week the authority served a prohibition order to Uber, against which the company immediately lodged an objection. They were successful because within a few days the judges granted the provisional injunction.
Before the court ruling, Uber Europe boss Pierre-Dimitri Gore Coty had already announced to ‘Manager Magazin’ that Uber would want to continue to offer the UberPOP-service in Hamburg.
This strategy is part of the commercial policy of the US company. „Uber simply starts with its offer; the cease and desist orders which often arrive afterwards are taken care of later,“ writes ‘Manager Magazine’.
In fact, German authorities seem to have walked right into this tactics trap. A survey by Taxi Times among German regulatory authorities showed that most supervisory authorities only want to deal with the matter when Uber becomes active in their respective region. There’s a more detailed evaluation of this Taxi Times-survey in the August issue.
JH
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