Europe’s highest court has ruled against Uber in the ride-hailing organization’s fight against French controllers. The decision implies a French court was within its rights to fine Uber two or three years back for running an unlawful transport service.
It’s the second most recent anti-Uber ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which said in December—for a situation including Spain this time—Uber is a transportation organization. Uber has reliably contended that it is a technology platform, a status that would enable it to sidestep regulations forced on its adversaries in the conventional taxi business.
“Member States may prohibit and punish the illegal exercise of a transport activity such as UberPop without having to notify the Commission in advance of the draft legislation laying down criminal penalties for the exercise of such an activity,” the CJEU said.
In 2016, a French court hit Uber with a $900,000 fine for running an illicit and dangerous transport service with drivers that were not legitimately licensed. The fine particularly identified with the UberPop service which utilizes general individuals as drivers, as opposed to experts. The French court said Uber had broken the 2014 “Thevenoud law,” which says chauffeured administrations gone through an online entrance need to come back to a base amongst fares, and that they can’t utilize applications to discover customers.
“As our new CEO has said, it is appropriate to regulate services such as Uber, and so we will continue the dialogue with cities across Europe,” the company said.
The case advanced up to the CJEU, where Uber pushed for the French judgment to be struck down on a detail—when EU nations draft laws that influence computerized services, they should first inform the European Commission, and this did not occur with the Thevenoud law. One of the CJEU chief legal advisors consequently encouraged the judges to govern against Uber. The court does not generally take after the counsel of its advocates-general, yet it typically does, and that is what happened on Tuesday.
Once more, this involved Uber’s status as a transportation organization, as opposed to an “Information society service.”
