Taxi drivers propose drastic regulation of alternative transport

Alternative transport should only be carried out by authorized alternative transport operators, who have, for each car used in carrying out the alternative transport, a valid compliant copy and the badge for alternative transport, which will be mounted on the rear doors and have the specified size and the content by the Romanian Road Authority, it is stated in a document submitted to the Government by the transport employers, act by which it is desired to amend GEO 49/2019 regarding alternative transport activities with passenger car and driver.

According to the document that is in the possession of the BURSA Newspaper, through the above definition which also contains the fact that the number of the respective cars cannot exceed half of the number of taxi meters in a locality, the management and management of the impact of environment that the alternative transport activity has. Especially since, according to another proposal in the cited document, alternative transport operators will only be authorized if they own Euro 6 cars.

Regarding the definition of the alternative transport journey, the employers want it to mean "travel mediated through a digital platform, performed with a passenger car and driver on a route ordered and accepted by the passenger, from the place of embarkation to the place of destination , carried out only within the radius of the authorization locality and occasionally between localities", with the prohibition of taking over orders or trips from other localities.

Also, the taxi operators propose that the alternative transport operator should be only the authorized natural person, the individual enterprise, the family enterprise or the legal entity owning the car with which alternative transport is carried out in ownership or leasing contract.

In order to support customers who would turn to alternative transport, the taximeter associations propose the prohibition of differentiated rates and any changes to the standard values of a journey for any other reasons, including those related to certain days, time slots, crowding in traffic, weather conditions, etc.

"Any tariff change must be announced at least 48 hours in advance", the quoted document states, with the taxi operators stating that the respective solution is in line with the position expressed by the Competition Council in its last preliminary report on the segment of alternative transport services , where in the section of recommendations dedicated to fiscal aspects it is specified:

"The competition authority made several recommendations aimed at the transparency of tariffs and price algorithms. Thus, the Competition Council proposes that all users of the application, whether they are drivers or passengers, be notified through the application and other electronic means regarding any change in the standard rate - price/km. Also, the Competition Authority recommends prohibiting the practice of differentiated standard rates on certain time slots considered "peak", because it represents a non-transparent and potentially misleading behavior for passengers".

Employers in the field of taximetry also want the cars that will serve the alternative transport to be equipped with tax devices that can correctly count the distance at a certain rate, in order to avoid any tax evasion through the application of the so-called dynamic rate.

At the same time, they request that the operator of the digital platform, if it is a non-resident legal entity, be obliged to have a subsidiary registered with the National Office of the Trade Register throughout the period in which it carries out its activity as an alternative transport intermediary on the territory of Romania, through which carry out all commercial activities in Romania, including approval of the platform. Taxi employers claim that currently only marketing activities are carried out through the subsidiaries registered with the ONRC, and the platforms' revenues regarding the commissions applied to the rides are not taxed in Romania.

In order to eliminate undeclared work from alternative transport, operators in the field of passenger transport in the taxi regime propose that drivers who work for alternative passenger transport companies have on board the car and present to the road control body, in addition to the documents provided by GEO 195/2002, the following documents: car civil liability insurance for transporting people, insurance for people and their goods, alternative transport badge, copy form of authorization for alternative transport, copy of the individual employment contract and certificate of attestation of professional training.

All these proposals above were submitted to the Government during the meeting of January 29, 2024, in which the transport operators established together with the institutional dialogue partners that, within a maximum of 30 days, the draft normative act should be made transparent for decision-making for the amendment of GEO 49/2019.

We note that following the meeting on January 29, 2024, the Government representatives who participated in the negotiations with the carriers did not say anything about the above proposals. The press release issued by the Victoria Palace, on January 29, 2024, states:

"Government representatives had today, at the Victoria Palace, a meeting with members of the organizations and structures in the field of taximetry and alternative transport, in the context of the protests started by them. The two sides had an exchange of views on the way to regulate the activity in the field of taximetry and alternative transport. During the meeting, the representatives of the taxi drivers mainly highlighted their dissatisfaction with the way in which the two activities are regulated, namely taxi and alternative transport, requesting the improvement of the legal framework in order to ensure fair competition between service providers, considering the new challenges that appear against the background of the evolution of technology and digitization. The participants in the discussions agreed that, in the next period, they would submit to the Government their observations regarding the amendment of the legislation that regulates their field of activity, and following the aggregation of their observations, a new meeting will be established in the same format. The meeting at the Victoria Palace was attended, on behalf of the Government, by state councilor Minel Ivaşcu, as well as other officials from the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization and the Authority for Digitization of Romania".

With regard to this press release, the representatives of the employers' associations in the field of taximetry told us that the meeting did not take place through the prism of the protests, but as a result of the agreement signed in advance between them and the Minister of Transport, Sorin Grindeanu, and that, if in 30 days the Government will not present the draft normative act requested based on the submitted proposals, all the necessary steps will be followed to initiate protest actions.

We remind you that last week ANAF sanctioned an economic operator from Bucharest that operates on the alternative passenger transport market. The inspectors of the General Anti-Fraud Fiscal Directorate calculated a damage caused to the general consolidated budget of the state of over 9.7 million lei. According to the press release issued by ANAF, the checks carried out revealed the fact that the company in question reduced the VAT payment to the state budget, by not recording in the accounting all the revenues made on the ride-sharing platforms, respectively by artificially increasing of deductible VAT, by illegally recording fuel purchases in the accounting. The quoted source also shows that the audited company reduced the fiscal obligations generated by the use of labor force by registering, declaring and paying the contributions related to individual part-time work contracts of two hours, given that the employees worked much more hours and achieved net incomes higher than those declared.