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INPRIMATU
The National Market and Competition Commission at the service of Uber?
  • The CNMC has announced that it will contest the autonomous regulations of the CAV in response to the request that Uber enable its presence in Bilbao.
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Argazkia: Wikimedia Commons

The National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) announced on Tuesday that it will contest the regulations of the Basque Autonomous Community, covering the demands of Uber.

According to El Salto, the Spanish multinational Uber was expelled from Barcelona and Valencia last January and May, respectively. It was a measure required by the regional regulations, since Uber does not recognize drivers as wage workers, but forces them to act under strict control under conditions of false self-employed, promoting a precarious work model. The Basque Government relied on the decrees of Catalonia and Valencia to push for the same ban when Uber arrived with twenty drivers on the streets of Bilbao.

The Commission has assured that "it does not question the standard as a whole", only the orders that led to the departure of Uber in Catalonia and Valencia: to ask for a pre-contract period of at least 30 minutes, to ban public road traffic when it is not working, not to make visible the availability of the Uber vehicle when it is parked and to prohibit the geolocation of the available vehicles. For the CNMC, these precepts "restrict competition and are not sufficiently justified from the point of view of general welfare".

The CAV decree was to take place on December 21, 2019, but hours earlier, the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country suspended the regulations at the request of the Unauto VTC association, so the requirement to hire an Uber vehicle 30 minutes earlier was not put into effect, continuing to work the drivers of transport vehicles carrying the driver.

Last February, the Commission asked the Basque Government to revise the regulations, but the Basque Government rejected the request. This administrative appeal submitted by the CNMC against the regulations of the Basque Government has received a separate vote from two Commission members.