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The thing about EU countries [1] that most American companies continually underestimate is: the primary focus of the legal system is to protect citizens/consume

The thing about EU countries [1] that most American companies continually underestimate is: the primary focus of the legal system is to protect citizens/consumers, not companies, for better or worse. You can't escape this as a company by simply ignoring the rules or throwing money into lobbying in Brussels, whether you're Uber, Airbnb, Google or Microsoft. [1] Especially the ones with a civil law system which is all of them except the UK.

pepelepoo 12y ago
Re. your footnote, Malta and Cyprus also practise Common Law.
- DrJokepu 12y ago
  And, obviously, Ireland.
  - melvinmt 12y ago
    Yeah sorry, I meant most of Europe: http://www.laits.utexas.edu/lawdem/unit02/supporting/map_civil_common.jpg http://www.laits.utexas.edu/lawdem/unit02/supporting/map_civ...
philh 12y ago
> the primary focus of the legal system is to protect citizens/consumers, not companies ... You can't escape this [by lobbying] This is somewhat incongruous with the Spanish court talking about "unfair competition"; and with "the move follows a complaint by the Madrid Taxi Association."
- krammer 12y ago
  Madrid Taxi Association is not a company... To help with the discussion, I dont think "politics love people more than in US". Just that people's "lobbies" have more "media power" than in the USA. And its a really bad timing for uber to come to our countries: anything that can sound like more unemployment its going to be rejected by government, even if it's false. Its a false dilemma, but taxi drivers are saying that government is destroying 5K jobs just in Madrid and giving them to the yankees.
- Xylakant 12y ago
  > This is somewhat incongruous with the Spanish court talking about "unfair competition"; and with "the move follows a complaint by the Madrid Taxi Association." Not at all. There's regulations that you need to follow to transport people for money. Skipping these regulations to offer a cheaper fare constitutes unfair competition. Your competitors have the right to complain. Those regulations can protect consumers - if that's the case is a different issue. (I can think of quite a couple of ineffective consumer protection laws that were passed with honest intentions but failed horribly.)
  - philh 12y ago
    It's somewhat incongruous, not completely incongruous but not "not at all" incongruous. You've presented a plausible argument why unfair competition is bad for consumers. But if consumer protection is the real focus, it seems likely that the court would instead have spoken about how Uber is violating such-and-such regulation which is in place to protect customers. (And to be fair, maybe the court did explicitly talk about that as well, and the BBC didn't quote that part. I'm not drawing any firm conclusions here.) When the court is talking about the effects on other companies, and when the court is only involved because of the actions of - krammer says it's not a company, but it certainly doesn't sound like a group of taxi customers - that's the kind of thing the court does when it's protecting companies, not when it's protecting customers. It's not damning, but it's suggestive.
arcatek 12y ago
> You can't escape this as a company by simply ignoring the rules or throwing money into lobbying in Brussels, whether you're Uber, Airbnb, Google or Microsoft. Sounds like a joke. I live in France, and there's a lot of lobbying here. But again, we're the country of mass strikes, so...
mike_hearn 12y ago
I'm not sure it's helpful to describe this as the awful corporatist Americans underestimating the strong, citizen-focussed EU. I am a British citizen living in Europe, and I'm for one pretty happy that Uber is trying to drag the taxi industry into the 21st century. Lots of my friends like and use Uber (though I don't use them myself as for some reason the app cannot verify me), I've yet to hear a single complaint about their service. The Spanish decision doesn't have anything directly to do with protecting people. It was triggered by complaints by the competition, it states that Uber is illegal because it's not authorised not because of some specifically bad thing they're doing .... if this is defending the consumer, why doesn't it look or feel like it? Frankly, the chance of an Uber-like company getting started in Europe feels close to zero. If it were up to us here to shake up the taxi business and apply basic mobile technology to it, I'm not sure it'd ever happen at all. America is hardly a perfect country and its people are not a perfect people, but you must admire their drive to get things done.
- exelius 12y ago
  In Europe you have different views of how markets should be regulated. In the US, deregulation and free markets are the de-facto assumption, but many European economies proudly trend more socialist than we do. Uber's typical appeal to free market economic principles doesn't go over as well in these markets. The Spanish laws in play are absolutely not defending the consumer, they're defending the worker. That's the entire point: in the US, consumer rights often trump worker rights, but that's not the case everywhere.
  - Dewie 12y ago
    > In Europe you have different views of how markets should be regulated. In the US, deregulation and free markets are the de-facto assumption, but many European economies proudly trend more socialist than we do. Europeans in general seem to also have a different conception of what the word socialist means, compared to Americans.
    - exelius 12y ago
      That's changing; there's no longer the USSR to provide the evil centrally planned economy as a model. But yes, I meant socialist as in the government owns and controls aspects of the economy, with profit maximization often not the goal of those industries.
josu 12y ago
You are forgetting about the strength of unions. Strikes look really bad for politicians and they are really easy to put together in countries such as Spain or France. On top of that, for some historical reasons citizens of these countries tend to support the strikers no matter what. Most of the people in Spain have never heard of Uber, so if the (government/opposition controlled) media is telling them that they are unlawfully stealing the jobs of taxi drivers, they will blindly support taxi drivers. Regulator-politicians aren't looking to "protect citizens/consumers" they are looking after their asses, because if they were they would get rid off the current taxi system and start from scratch, or at least take an Irish-like approach. UPDATE: This is the main reason why Uber has been banned http://ep01.epimg.net/ccaa/imagenes/2014/12/05/madrid/1417791577_876738_1417866536_noticia_normal.jpg http://ep01.epimg.net/ccaa/imagenes/2014/12/05/madrid/141779...
bobcostas55 12y ago
As someone who has lived for ~20 years in multiple EU countries, this is a completely delusional comment. While corporatism in the EU is often veiled in pro-consumer language, this is nothing but a thin smoke screen. The roots of corruption go extremely deep. I'd even go as far as to say that most EU countries are ultimately governed by special interests and captive bureaucrats with only minimal input by elected officials. One recent, relevant, and particularly egregious example: GMOs are widely banned under the guise of protecting consumers (from what, they don't say of course), while the agricultural lobby is in charge of agricultural policy: they steal ~55 billion euros per year just in direct subsidies!
feraloink 12y ago
The Netherlands banned the UberPop ride-sharing service too. > "Drivers who transport people for payment without a licence are breaking the law," said the decision from the Hague-based Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal. This sounds like asking for a heap of trouble though: > In a statement on Monday, Uber said it would continue to offer UberPop, despite the threat of a fine of up to €100,00 for itself, and one of up to €40,000 for drivers.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Goodbye sensible run rate. You can only pay fines of the magnitude "in the course of business" for so long.
mason240 12y ago
Banning new ways of doing things by default seems pretty anti-consumer and very pro-established corporation to me. But like the top comment said, maybe it's a cultural thing.

pepelepoo 12y ago

Re. your footnote, Malta and Cyprus also practise Common Law.

DrJokepu 12y ago
And, obviously, Ireland.
- melvinmt 12y ago
  Yeah sorry, I meant most of Europe: http://www.laits.utexas.edu/lawdem/unit02/supporting/map_civil_common.jpg http://www.laits.utexas.edu/lawdem/unit02/supporting/map_civ...

philh 12y ago

> the primary focus of the legal system is to protect citizens/consumers, not companies ... You can't escape this [by lobbying] This is somewhat incongruous with the Spanish court talking about "unfair competition"; and with "the move follows a complaint by the Madrid Taxi Association."

krammer 12y ago
Madrid Taxi Association is not a company... To help with the discussion, I dont think "politics love people more than in US". Just that people's "lobbies" have more "media power" than in the USA. And its a really bad timing for uber to come to our countries: anything that can sound like more unemployment its going to be rejected by government, even if it's false. Its a false dilemma, but taxi drivers are saying that government is destroying 5K jobs just in Madrid and giving them to the yankees.
Xylakant 12y ago
> This is somewhat incongruous with the Spanish court talking about "unfair competition"; and with "the move follows a complaint by the Madrid Taxi Association." Not at all. There's regulations that you need to follow to transport people for money. Skipping these regulations to offer a cheaper fare constitutes unfair competition. Your competitors have the right to complain. Those regulations can protect consumers - if that's the case is a different issue. (I can think of quite a couple of ineffective consumer protection laws that were passed with honest intentions but failed horribly.)
- philh 12y ago
  It's somewhat incongruous, not completely incongruous but not "not at all" incongruous. You've presented a plausible argument why unfair competition is bad for consumers. But if consumer protection is the real focus, it seems likely that the court would instead have spoken about how Uber is violating such-and-such regulation which is in place to protect customers. (And to be fair, maybe the court did explicitly talk about that as well, and the BBC didn't quote that part. I'm not drawing any firm conclusions here.) When the court is talking about the effects on other companies, and when the court is only involved because of the actions of - krammer says it's not a company, but it certainly doesn't sound like a group of taxi customers - that's the kind of thing the court does when it's protecting companies, not when it's protecting customers. It's not damning, but it's suggestive.

arcatek 12y ago

> You can't escape this as a company by simply ignoring the rules or throwing money into lobbying in Brussels, whether you're Uber, Airbnb, Google or Microsoft. Sounds like a joke. I live in France, and there's a lot of lobbying here. But again, we're the country of mass strikes, so...

mike_hearn 12y ago

I'm not sure it's helpful to describe this as the awful corporatist Americans underestimating the strong, citizen-focussed EU. I am a British citizen living in Europe, and I'm for one pretty happy that Uber is trying to drag the taxi industry into the 21st century. Lots of my friends like and use Uber (though I don't use them myself as for some reason the app cannot verify me), I've yet to hear a single complaint about their service. The Spanish decision doesn't have anything directly to do with protecting people. It was triggered by complaints by the competition, it states that Uber is illegal because it's not authorised not because of some specifically bad thing they're doing .... if this is defending the consumer, why doesn't it look or feel like it? Frankly, the chance of an Uber-like company getting started in Europe feels close to zero. If it were up to us here to shake up the taxi business and apply basic mobile technology to it, I'm not sure it'd ever happen at all. America is hardly a perfect country and its people are not a perfect people, but you must admire their drive to get things done.

exelius 12y ago
In Europe you have different views of how markets should be regulated. In the US, deregulation and free markets are the de-facto assumption, but many European economies proudly trend more socialist than we do. Uber's typical appeal to free market economic principles doesn't go over as well in these markets. The Spanish laws in play are absolutely not defending the consumer, they're defending the worker. That's the entire point: in the US, consumer rights often trump worker rights, but that's not the case everywhere.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > In Europe you have different views of how markets should be regulated. In the US, deregulation and free markets are the de-facto assumption, but many European economies proudly trend more socialist than we do. Europeans in general seem to also have a different conception of what the word socialist means, compared to Americans.
  - exelius 12y ago
    That's changing; there's no longer the USSR to provide the evil centrally planned economy as a model. But yes, I meant socialist as in the government owns and controls aspects of the economy, with profit maximization often not the goal of those industries.

josu 12y ago

You are forgetting about the strength of unions. Strikes look really bad for politicians and they are really easy to put together in countries such as Spain or France. On top of that, for some historical reasons citizens of these countries tend to support the strikers no matter what. Most of the people in Spain have never heard of Uber, so if the (government/opposition controlled) media is telling them that they are unlawfully stealing the jobs of taxi drivers, they will blindly support taxi drivers. Regulator-politicians aren't looking to "protect citizens/consumers" they are looking after their asses, because if they were they would get rid off the current taxi system and start from scratch, or at least take an Irish-like approach. UPDATE: This is the main reason why Uber has been banned http://ep01.epimg.net/ccaa/imagenes/2014/12/05/madrid/1417791577_876738_1417866536_noticia_normal.jpg http://ep01.epimg.net/ccaa/imagenes/2014/12/05/madrid/141779...

bobcostas55 12y ago

As someone who has lived for ~20 years in multiple EU countries, this is a completely delusional comment. While corporatism in the EU is often veiled in pro-consumer language, this is nothing but a thin smoke screen. The roots of corruption go extremely deep. I'd even go as far as to say that most EU countries are ultimately governed by special interests and captive bureaucrats with only minimal input by elected officials. One recent, relevant, and particularly egregious example: GMOs are widely banned under the guise of protecting consumers (from what, they don't say of course), while the agricultural lobby is in charge of agricultural policy: they steal ~55 billion euros per year just in direct subsidies!

feraloink 12y ago

The Netherlands banned the UberPop ride-sharing service too. > "Drivers who transport people for payment without a licence are breaking the law," said the decision from the Hague-based Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal. This sounds like asking for a heap of trouble though: > In a statement on Monday, Uber said it would continue to offer UberPop, despite the threat of a fine of up to €100,00 for itself, and one of up to €40,000 for drivers.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
Goodbye sensible run rate. You can only pay fines of the magnitude "in the course of business" for so long.

mason240 12y ago

Banning new ways of doing things by default seems pretty anti-consumer and very pro-established corporation to me. But like the top comment said, maybe it's a cultural thing.