Berlin has voted to ban Uber on safety grounds as the taxi service app continues to run up against resistance in Germany.
Officials said the California-based company, which operates in 110 cities around the world, did not do enough to protect its passengers from unlicensed drivers.
A Senate of Berlin statement said Uber — already banned in Hamburg — also failed to provide adequate insurance for its drivers or their passengers in the case of accidents.
The Berlin ruling states: “Uber is from now on no longer allowed to use a smartphone app or similar application, or offer services via this app which are in breach of the Public Transport Act.”
Uber said it would appeal against the ban, saying the senate’s decision was “anything but progressive,” and it was “seeking to limit consumer choice for all the wrong reasons.”
Uber claims that it does not operate a taxi service, but merely offers a platform that mediates between drivers and passengers.
Uber could be fined up to 25,000 euros (US$33,412) if it ignores the ban. A Hamburg court last month lifted the ban pending a final decision. On Thursday, Uber’s general manager Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty told the Handelsblatt newspaper that he expected a similar decision in Berlin.
The Berlin ban follows Europe-wide protests by taxi drivers in June. In its statement, the Senate of Berlin said that the “protection of the taxi industry” was one of the factors it had taken into consideration.
The Association of Berlin Taxi Drivers welcomed the decision in a statement on its Web site. “As taxi drivers, we have to meet a series of rules and commitments,” the association’s chairman Richard Leipold said. “With its decision the senate has clarified that these apply to every player on the market, even digital competitors.”
Leipold said he hoped other cities would follow Berlin’s lead. An interim injunction against Uber has been in place in Berlin since April, after a small taxi provider took legal action against the company.
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