Uber Is Ordered by Spain and Thailand to Halt Operations
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — A run of bad news for Uber continued on Tuesday, when Spain and Thailand ordered the ride-sharing service to cease operations in the two countries. In Madrid, a commercial court judge sided with a taxi association complaint, saying that Uber must cease driving in Spain until a lawsuit contesting its right to operate can be heard. In Bangkok, the Thai transport authorities ordered Uber to shut down after finding that its drivers lacked the registration and insurance needed to operate commercial vehicles, Reuters reported. Just one day earlier, officials in New Delhi, the Indian capital, ordered Uber to cease its operations there after one of its drivers was accused of raping a passenger. Also on Monday, a Dutch appeals court upheld that Uber drivers who transport passengers without a taxi license are violating Dutch law. The court said the company would be subject to immediate fines if it continued to operate its UberPop service, which enables any licensed driver with a car and Uber-issued device to pick up passengers. Uber, which is based in San Francisco, said in a statement Tuesday that the Madrid judge’s ruling was “inconsistent with broad political acknowledgment in Spain and across the European Union on the benefits of sharing economy services.'’ “We’ll defend ourselves in anyway we can legally,” Susanne Elias-Stulemeijer, an Uber spokeswoman in London added in a phone interview. She said that the company had yet to be contacted by the Spanish judge. “But first we need to see the official document." Uber is the most visible of a number of companies that are using smartphone technology to reinvent the taxi business. Clients use the app to hail a ride from ordinary car owners who have signed up to shuttle passengers. The nascent service has grown at a phenomenal rate, and done so with virtually no regulation. But its success — the company has been valued by investors at an eye-popping $40 billion and before the recent problems was operating in more than 200 cities around the world — has put Uber in the sights of public officials on various continents, sometimes because of resistance from entrenched operators, and sometimes because of concerns about the service’s approach to labor and safety rules. The company has even run into resistance on its home turf of the United States, one of the most freewheeling markets for disruptive technologies. On Monday, the city government of Portland, Ore., said it would sue to stop the company from operating. Europe is one of Uber’s fastest-growing markets; consumers have embraced it as an alternative to the guildlike taxi services that in many cities place low priority on customer service. Even before the Dutch and Spanish actions, Uber was finding the terrain inhospitable. A Frankfurt court in September barred UberPop from operating in Germany, the largest market on the Continent, until a case could be heard on its compliance with competition rules. Uber may not have had its last bit of bad news. On Friday, a court in Paris is expected to decide whether to shut down the service in France. |