Where I live, starting a service like uber requires an appropriate drivers license and insurance. No licenses, nothing. (But you can't pick people up off the streets, that is something else, and licensed).
As result, there's many services like uber — but uber themselves is banned, because while the German government was willing to ignore the commercial drivers license requirement, they couldn't ignore the insurance requirements that Uber refused to fulfill.
> As result, there's many services like uber — but uber themselves is banned, because while the German government was willing to ignore the commercial drivers license requirement, they couldn't ignore the insurance requirements that Uber refused to fulfill.
The German government had nothing to do with it. The lawsuits were brought by Uber's competitors under §3a of the Unfair Competition Act [1], which prohibits violating laws in order to gain a competitive advantage. They have standing under §8 (3), item 1, of the same law. The courts had no choice but to rule in their favor; it was pretty much as open and shut as a civil case can be.
Correct, but the federal government offered to reduce the requirements for running this service for all competitors on the market, according to Dobrindt.
Oh, it appears I misunderstood you. Yes, the federal government was willing to review the regulatory requirements, at least in principle. I was focusing on the last subclause of your sentence.
Yeah I think there's a similar "loophole" in France but since everybody has a smartphone these days many taxis feel like it's unfair competition anyway. I'm kind of torn on this issue frankly, on one hand the taxis have had a de-facto monopoly for decades and as such ended up with a rather high price for a sub-par service so I'm glad uber shook them up a bit. On the other Uber is clearly playing dirty and we might end up being worse off in the end if taxi drivers don't manage to earn their life decently while most of our fare money ends up in some tax heaven never to be seen again.
As result, there's many services like uber — but uber themselves is banned, because while the German government was willing to ignore the commercial drivers license requirement, they couldn't ignore the insurance requirements that Uber refused to fulfill.