INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The Danish Supreme Court has upheld large fines issued to several Uber drivers for operating without a taxi license, at a time when the
ride-hailing giant was still running its non-licensed p2p driver UberPop service in the market.
The decision could mean more than a thousand
additional Uber drivers who sold rides in Denmark could also be faced with a big bill.
The four drivers had appealed fines issues by the
national court — of between DKK 40,000 (~$6,270) and DKK 486,500 (~$76,200) — but the Supreme Court judged the amounts to be
appropriate.
The level of fines is based on the number of Uber rides each driver carried out
In the case of the largest fine the unnamed individual had apparently run up 5,427 Uber rides.
Uber drivers in Denmark have also faced
demands for unpaid taxes this year, after Danish tax authorities found tax avoidance among almost all of them.
Meanwhile Uber pulled out of
Denmark early last year, blaming a new taxi law which includesrequirements such as mandatory fare meters and seat sensors.Though it says it
continues to engage with local authorities to lobby for the kind of tech-friendly reform which would enable it to return.
When it left
Denmark the company said it had more than 2,000 drivers in the market and 300,000 users.
According to AP, today Supreme Court judgement
paves the way for fines to be issued against a further 1,500 people who had also driven for Uber without a taxi license
A spokesman for the Copenhagen police told Reuters it would assess the verdict and decide how to proceed next week.
At the end of 2016
Danish prosecutors sought to bring a test case against Uber European business, seeking to indict it on charges of assisting two drivers of
breaking local taxi laws — likely contributing to Uber decision to shut up shop there.
In November of the same year the Danish Supreme
Court also ruled Uber to be an illegal taxi service, rather than a ride-sharing platform as the company lawyers had sought to argue.
Since
then Europe supreme court, the ECJ, has cemented that view of the business in the region, ruling at the end of last year that Uber is a
transport company, not a platform — and locking the company into a new era of needing to work with local authorities to try to reform taxi
laws, rather than just burning rubber over their rulebooks.
Under its current CEO DaraKhosrowshahi, Uber is certainly trying to put founder
Travis Kalanick legacy way of doing business behind it — dispensing apologies and emollient words.
And seeking to enact a pivot to become
a multi-modal transport platform — to be able to offer cities something other than just more traffic and congestion on already clogged and
polluted roads.
This week it also debuteda new streamlined brand look, after hiring anew CMO Rebecca Messina, who spent two decades selling
sugared water at Coca-Cola.
But even as Uber seeks to carve out a new, more progressive looking path its past practices keep coming back to
bite it in the boot.
It not only the company ambitions being dented either; In Denmark, for example, it thousands of people who put their
faith in its platform to sell driving services now faced with being on the hook for thousands of dollars worth of fines apiece.
Commenting
on the Supreme Court ruling an Uber spokesperson told us: &We are very disappointed for the drivers involved and our top priority is to
support them during this difficult time.
We are changing the way we do business and are operating in line with local laws across Europe,
connecting with professionally licensed drivers
Drivers who used the Uber app were key in providing a safe, reliable and affordable option to help hundreds of thousands of Danes get around
Copenhagen.
We also asked whether Uber would be paying fines issued to drivers in Denmark as a result of them offering an unlicensed service
The company did not respond directly to our question, saying only that it is in the process of reviewing the Supreme Court ruling and its
