As of November 26, the Uber X application will be prohibited in the Belgian capital after a procedure initiated by a taxi company.
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Amir is worried: This young Brussels will have to store in the garage his beautiful Mercedes E classy class while he has not yet reimbursed one-third of his credit. Friday, November 26 at 18 hours, it will have to comply, like some 2,000 other Uber drivers, to a judgment of the Brussels Court of Appeal which ordered, Wednesday, November 23, the judgment of the Uber X application. End of six years of judicial combat, green taxis, one of the main companies of the Belgian capital, have gain cause. They felt that using the regulation of the region.
“It’s absurd because the legislation in question dates from 1995, when smartphones and applications did not exist,” we commented, on the side of the Belgian subsidiary of the American platform. which, for lack of better, speaks of a possible appeal before the Court of Cassation. And possibly, perhaps, on the “taxi plan” mentioned by the regional government. This reform could decree a single status for professional drivers, while introducing a possible limited access to the profession and leaving some privileges to classical taxi companies. Problem: The text has been on the exam for seven years and does not seem to be endorsed.
Artificial Contracts
Without a political decision, it is therefore the justice that attempted to regulate what was, initially, a system called carpooling between individuals. In September 2015, it prohibited the UberPop application and ordered penalty by denying any right to transport customers to drivers who do not have a taxi license.
This is another platform, Uber X, which then appeared, based on so-called “pre-existing transport contracts” between a customer and a limousine driver. A first judge refused to follow the argument of green taxis, who wanted to see the extent to Uber X, the Court of Appeal therefore finally right. It considers that the contracts passed between the limousine owners and the platform are artificial and that their principle is only intended to circumvent the legal obligation to hold a taxi license to transport people.
The Belgian federation of taxis has also brought an action against Uber and, seized of a third file, the Court of Appeal decreed, in the spring of 2021, the illegality of the races concluded with a smartphone, those – Could not be transmitted, according to the judges, only by radio semitors, which are reserved for taxis. Seized in turn by Uber, it is now the Constitutional Court that will have to decide this question.
Taken by the throat, the Uber drivers have, in any case, announced protest actions and they disrupted the traffic in some places of the capital from Thursday morning. Diving in traffic jams, the Brussels motorists knew who curse: Amir and his colleagues or police who, claiming salary increases and an improvement in their status, organize dams for a few days.