ECJ Confirms Status Of Uber As Transport Services Company

On 10 April 2018, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the "ECJ") delivered a judgment confirming that Uber's UberPop ridesharing service is a "service in the field of transport" within the meaning of Article 2(2)(d) of Directive 2006/123 of 12 December 2006 on services in the internal market (the "Services Directive") (ECJ, 10 April 2018, Case C-320/16, Uber France SAS v. Nabil Bensalem). Article 2(2)(d) of the Services Directive excludes transport services from the Directive's scope. The ECJ delivered its judgment in response to a request for a preliminary ruling from a Lille Regional Court. The dispute dealt with a private prosecution and civil action brought against Uber France SAS ("Uber") by a taxi driver based, inter alia, on a newly introduced provision of French criminal law which prohibits and penalises the organisation of a system for putting customers in touch with persons who engage in the carriage of passengers by road without authorisation. In the case giving rise to the preliminary reference, Uber was charged with the "unlawful organisation from 1 October 2014 onwards of a system for putting customers in contact with persons carrying passengers by road for remuneration".

Uber maintained that the French legislation constituted a technical regulation which concerns an information society service within the meaning of Directive 98/34/EC of 22 June 1998 laying down a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations and of rules on information society services (the "Directive on Information Society Services"). That Directive requires EU Member States to notify the European Commission (the "Commission") of any draft rules laying down technical regulations relating to products and information society services, failing which those rules will be unenforceable against individuals. In the present case, the French authorities had not notified the legislation in question to the Commission prior to its promulgation.

In essence, the reference for a preliminary ruling sought to establish whether the provision of French law must be classified as a rule on information society services, subject to the obligation of prior notification to the Commission, or whether, conversely, the provision concerns a transport service, which is excluded from the scope of the Directive on Information Society Services and the Services Directive.

In relation to the legal classification of...