AGCM

The Italian Competition Authority had warned the cooperative that prevents member taxi drivers from allocating a share of their unused capacity to competing intermediary platforms in the provision of collection and sorting services for taxi demand in the municipality of Rome. This is the second non-compliance for Radiotaxi 3570.

The Italian Competition Authority found that the cooperative had failed to comply with its decision no. 27244/2018 and thereby fined it €140,043.95.

The Authority had warned the cooperative to change the statutory and regulatory clauses on the absolute non-compete obligation, which prevents taxi drivers from allocating a share of their unused capacity to competing intermediary platforms in the provision of collection and sorting services for taxi demand in the municipality of Rome.

This is the second non-compliance for Radiotaxi 3570, which did not committed to allow its taxi members to accept calls from third-party platforms when there is surplus capacity, without the obligatory intermediation of the proprietary itTaxi platform.

Specifically, the Authority did not consider appropriate the measure whereby Radiotaxi 3570 drivers would only be able to release unused capacity to platforms that had signed interoperability agreements with itTaxi. In this manner, the cooperative would have been given the right to choose the platforms for which the taxi drivers would be able to operate, and also to define their economic terms and conditions. Rather, it should be up to individual taxi drivers to directly identify the intermediary platforms to which they can make their excess capacity available. In fact, only in this way can adequate conditions be guaranteed for opening the market for intermediary services for taxi demand to competition from other platforms.

Considering the ongoing infringement and the persistent non-compliance with the warning, the Authority also imposed a periodic penalty payment of €214.40 per day (to be calculated until the day of compliance), in accordance with Article 15, paragraph 2-bis, letter a), of Law no. 287/1990.

Rome, 8 August 2024