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Asociación Profesional Élite Taxi v. Uber Systems Spain SL (C.J.E.U.)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

Ilda Durri
Ilda Durri*
Affiliation:
PhD candidate at the Institute for Labour Law, KU Leuven University, Belgium.
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Extract

In 2014, the Asociación Profesional Élite Taxi (Elite Taxi) brought an action before the Juzgado de lo Mercantil No 3 de Barcelona (Commercial Court No. 3, Barcelona, Spain) for the infringement of the national law on taxi services and the carrying out of misleading practices and acts of unfair competition by Uber Systems Spain SL (Uber). The two parties in the main proceedings are Elite Taxi, a taxi drivers' association in Barcelona, and Uber, a company related to Uber Technologies Inc. In the proceedings, Uber argued that its smartphone app constituted only a technical platform and should be regulated as an “information society service,” subject to EU law. However, the court ruled against Uber and found that it was providing a “service in the field of transport,” making the company subject to the potentially more stringent regulations of individual EU member states.

Type
International Legal Documents
Information
International Legal Materials , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , August 2019 , pp. 837 - 848
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by The American Society of International Law 

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Law on Taxi Services (B.O.E. 2003, 189) (Spain); Regulation on Taxi Services in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (B.O.P.B. 2004, 138).

2 Law on Unfair Competition (B.O.E. 1991, 10) (Spain).

3 Council Directive 2006/123/EC, art. 2(2)(d) O.J. (L 376) 36.

4 Council Directive 98/34/EC, art. 1(2), 1998 O.J. (L 204) 37, amended by Council Directive 98/48/EC, 1998 O.J. (L 217) 18.

5 Council Directive 2000/31/EC, arts. 2(a), 3(2), 3(4), O.J. (L 178) 1.

6 Law on Taxi Services, supra note 1, art. 4.

7 Case C-434/15, Asociación Profesional Élite Taxi v. Uber Systems Spain SL, ¶ 35 (Dec. 20, 2017), http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsessionid=C90F145FC6888142C21BA6CF71941225?text=&docid=198047&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=381707" [hereinafter Uber case].

8 Directive 98/34, supra note 4, art. 1(2).

9 Uber case, supra note 7, ¶ 34.

10 Id. ¶ 39.

11 Aslam, Farrar, and Others v. Uber [2016] Employment Tribunals, Case Nos: 2202551/2015 & Others, ¶ 89 (UK).

12 O'Connor v. Uber Technologies Inc., 904 F.3d 1087 (N.D. Cal. 2015).

13 Most of the countries recognize a dichotomy of work relations between employees within the scope of labor law and independent contractors outside the scope of labor law.

14 Valerio De Stefano & Mathias Wouters, The Court of Justice of the EU, Uber and Labour Protection, A Labour Lawyers' Approach, in The Platform Economy: Unraveling the Legal Status of Online Intermediaries 187, 193 (Bram Devolder ed., 2019).

15 Case C-320/16, Bensalem v. Uber France SAS (Apr. 10, 2018), http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=200882&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=333964.

16 O'Connor, 904 F.3d 1087.

17 Case C-434/15, Asociación Profesional Elite Taxi v. Uber Systems Spain SL, Opinion of Advocate General Szpunar, ¶ 61 (May 11, 2017), https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:62015CC0434&from=EN.