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Uber and its execs hit with fines in France for illegal taxi service
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FeedSource: [ArsTechnica] collected from rss-bot logs
Time: 2016-06-11 14:37:17 UTC
Original URL: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/uber-and-execs-fined-france-illegal-taxi-service/ [arstechnica.com]
Title:
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Uber—and its execs—hit with fines in France for illegal taxi service
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story [arstechnica.com]:
Uber has been hit with a €800,000 fine (~$900,000) for running an illegal transport service and breaking privacy laws in France, the New York Times [nytimes.com] reports.
The penalty was dished out to the ride-sharing app by a French court on Thursday. Additionally, Uber’s EMEA director Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty and Thibaud Simphal—the company’s boss in France—were slapped with fines of €30,000 (~$34,000) and €20,000 (~$22,500) respectively. The two men were taken into custody by French authorities [arstechnica.co.uk] a year ago.
Half of those sanctions—and the €964,000 (€800,000 plus court fees, for a total over $1 million) that Uber must pay—are “suspended sentences,” meaning they need only pay 50 percent of the fines providing there are no further breaches of the law.
Brussels' observers barely flinch, given Kroe's pro-Uber stance.
“The acts committed constituted violations, repeated over time, of laws related to two major and distinct areas of social life: the laws organising the public transport of people, and those protecting personal data,” said judge Cécile Louis-Loyant according to a Dow Jones newswire account [theaustralian.com.au].
The company suspended its UberPop operations in July 2015 [arstechnica.co.uk] after a new taxi law, widely seen as targeting the ride-sharing app, came into force in 2014. The so-called Thevenoud law requires cars to return to base between rides, and it limits the use of software to find customers in the street.
Uber hit back by filing a formal complaint in which it argued that the law breaches the right to free enterprise—the European Commission is currently considering its legality [reuters.com].
The UberPop service—which differs from UberX and UberBlack in using drivers who don't hold a special chauffeur licence—has additionally faced legal challenges in Italy, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands.
Elsewhere on Thursday, a court in Frankfurt rejected [bloomberg.com] Uber’s appeal against a ban on the service in Germany.
Uber said it would appeal against the French ruling, but its woes in the country don’t end there. The company is also under investigation over its arrangements with the firm's drivers. Uber maintains they are not employees; they're independent contractors. The French regulators may see it differently, however.
