Germany bans taxi app Uber

published 4 September 2014

"Despite having the most German-sounding name possible," said Kevin Roose on Nymag.com, Uber has been banned in Germany.

Taxi Deutschland, the industry association, took Uber to court for non-compliance with German transport law. It says Uber's drivers operate without the necessary permits.

Uber plans to keep operating while it appeals, even though it faces fines of up to €250,000 per trip.

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The service allows customers to order and pay for a car with a private driver via a smartphone app. Uber has expanded to 3,200 cities since its inception in 2009, and has been banned in several of them.

What the commentators said

In Germany's case, "there is too much legal cover for those protecting vested interests", said the FT. Taxi apps aren't the only internet services that promote consumer's interests and have the potential to give the economy a big boost.

Germany needs to be "more open to this sort of innovation if it is to shake up its sleepy services sector", which in turn is crucial to bolstering long-term growth. There is just too much red tape.

The regulation of professional servicesis stricter in Germany than in all butfive of the 27 states monitored by the OECD think tank. According to the World Bank, Germany ranks 11th outof 189 economies for the ease ofstarting a business worse than Iran, Russia and Senegal.

The likely upshot, concluded Kevin Roose, is that Uber will manage to rally customers to its side and the taxi lobby "will be made to look corrupt and protectionist".

The courts will find a "halfway measure" that allows Uber drivers to operate if they get the proper licences. But with the German public less instinctively sympathetic to "brashupstarts" than Americans, "the battle may be more protracted".

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.