Portuguese associations of the taxi sector participate this Thursday in a demonstration of European taxi drivers, in front of the headquarters of the European Commission, in Brussels, to demand measures from this institution after the “Uber Files” case.
The Portuguese Federation of Taxis, the National Association of Road Transport in Light Cars (ANTRAL) and the National Association of United Taxis of Portugal (ANTUP) will be represented in Brussels.
The object of the protest “is to demand from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the parliaments of the respective Member States the consequences of the promiscuity now revealed -with facts- that allowed the invasion and installation of this multinational [Uber] in Europe”.
It is intended to know the intentions of the European Commission after the disclosure of the case, to demand parliamentary investigations, sanctions and compensation, and to demand that “the difference between the public utility service of the taxi and the offers of the private initiative be clearly marked”. “.
The manifesto also includes the demand for budgeting for the modernization and decarbonization of the public utility service of the taxi, and the brake on the liberalization of the public utility service of the taxi, about which the European associations were not heard.
The “Uber Files” investigation involved 40 media outlets from 29 countries (Portugal is not on this list of ‘media partners’, although the Portuguese case was addressed), and analyzed more than 124,000 documents. It concluded that, between 2013 and 2017, the then executive director of the transport platform, Travis Kalanick, supported a strategy (including in Portugal) that exploited violence against Uber drivers to promote the company’s image in front of taxi drivers and governments that created problems for their business. .
Source: TSF
