In a ruling delivered on Tuesday 10 April in Case C-320/16, the judges at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) held that member states may prohibit and punish, as a matter of criminal law, the illegal exercise of transport activities in the context of the UberPop service, without notifying the Commission in advance of the draft legislation. This decision therefore goes in the same direction as the conclusions of Advocate General Maciej Szpunar on 4 July last (see EUROPE 11822).
The French company Uber France (hereafter Uber) provides, by means of a smartphone application, a service called UberPop, through which it puts non-professional drivers using their own vehicles in contact with persons who wish to make urban journeys. The company is being sued in the French courts for having proposed this service in return for payment.
Uber maintains that the French legislation on which those criminal proceedings against it are based constitutes a technical regulation, which concerns an information society service within the meaning of directive 98/34/EC that requires member states to notify the Commission prior to any draft legislation or rules laying down technical regulations relating to this subject. In the present case, the French authorities did not notify the criminal legislation in question to the Commission.
The Regional Court in Lille, France, before which the matter was brought, asked the Court of Justice whether the French authorities were required to notify the Commission of the draft legislation in advance.
In his conclusions, Mr Szpurnar argued that the UberPop service offered came within the field of transport and did not constitute an information society service within the meaning of the directive and did therefore not make it incumbent on the French authorities to provide prior notification of their draft legislation to the Commission. The judges therefore uphold these arguments and also draw on the ruling they made on Case C-434/15 on 20 December last (see EUROPE 11930). In the latter ruling, the Court holds that the UberPop service offered in Spain came within the field of transport and did not constitute an information society service within the meaning of directive 98/34/EC. In this connection, the Court’s view is that the UberPop service offered in France is “essentially identical” to the service provided in Spain, that being a matter for Regional Court of Lille to verify.
The Court accordingly concludes that there is no obligation for the French authorities to notify the Commission in advance of the draft legislation.
Contacted by EUROPE, a spokesperson for Uber explained that, “This case raised the question of whether the European Commission should have been given prior notification of a French law of 2014. The procedure in question more specifically involved Uber’s private individual service suspended in France in 2015. As our new CEO has said, regulating services such as Uber is appropriate and we will continue our dialogue with European cities” in this regard. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)