The background story is: in Hungary, about one year before Uber's entry, large taxi companies lobbied for a very heavy regulation on transport services that fix

The background story is: in Hungary, about one year before Uber's entry, large taxi companies lobbied for a very heavy regulation on transport services that fixed the rates and raised drivers' entry level significantly. The said purpose was to kill off the "taxi hyenas", but the reason and effect was to end competition by enforcing a uniformized premium level service. "Taxi hyenas" were replaced by the "taxi maffia" -- but not just the hyenas, but small and (to some rate) innovative companies were gone out of business. The taxi drivers who remained in business were in for the trade-off of investing into compliance with new regulation but making more money than before. So old school taxi was not simply lingering in its naturally backward state as in other countries, but there was an artificially fortified status quo. In that situation, when value personal transfer reappeared with Uber, it was therefore even more sore for the taxi companies and drivers, who took their position and the protection of their investment granted by the state. So what happened is nothing else just the taxi maffia enforced this grant and the state complied. Both sticking to decisions that once made (no regard of consequences), and heavy state control is quite to the taste of the government -- thus they complied happily. And once the government puts its weight into something, there is no question it's gonna happen. The only surprise element is that Uber resisted so far.