The EU Court of Justice AG Szpunar issues an opinion that questions whether taxi services can be regarded as a service of general economic interest (Private Hire Vehicles)

“In many places across the European Union, suppliers of taxi services have traditionally been shielded from competition thanks to State regulation, while web-based platforms have started offering local passenger transport-on-demand services with a high degree of zeal, precision and efficiency”. The previous statement was one of the opening lines of the Opinion issued by Advocate General Szpunar on the preliminary ruling request from the High Court of Catalonia, providing us yet with another chapter in the competition vs. regulation saga and, more specifically, in the taxi vs. private hire vehicles (PHV) contest. This fight between the taxi service operators and PHV companies has been fought in European courts for more than a decade now. The taxi industry won one of the last and most