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Minimum fares for Uber and Bolt: Frankfurt faces legal hurdles
The city of Frankfurt am Main continues to examine the introduction of minimum fare charges for rental car companies that offer rides via platforms such as Uber and Bolt. A corresponding legal opinion is now available as a draft, but according to the city, it still needs to be revised. The background is the existence of significant price differences between the tariff-bound taxi trade and rental car offerings, as well as legal difficulties with comparable regulations in other German cities.
Price Differences Between Taxis and Rental Cars
As the Frankfurter Rundschau reports, a price comparison for a nearly 25-kilometer trip from Frankfurt-Seckbach to Frankfurt Airport illustrates the differences between the transportation options. While Bolt offered the route from €23.90 and Uber from €27.95, the fixed price for a taxi bookable via the Taxi Deutschland app stood at €54.20. Thus, the taxi ride in this comparison cost more than twice the cheapest rental car offer. Unlike rental car companies, taxi operators cannot freely set their fare charges. The applicable taxi tariffs are set by the Frankfurt magistrate.
The different pricing options are a key backdrop to the political discussion about the economic future of the local taxi trade. With minimum fare charges for rental car companies, the city could establish binding price floors and thereby regulate competition between the two forms of transport.
City councillors demanded legal opinions
By the end of 2025, the Frankfurt City Council had urged the magistrate to have the legal admissibility of corresponding minimum prices examined. The basis for a possible regulation is Paragraph 51a of the Passenger Transport Act. The provision essentially allows the setting of minimum transport charges for traffic with hire cars. However, the competent authorities must observe statutory prerequisites. This includes, among other things, the hearing of the companies that would be affected by such a regulation.
According to Frankfurt's head of the Public Order Department, Martin-Benedikt Schäfer, the commissioned legal opinion is now available as a draft. However, there are still open questions and points that the evaluator must revise. As long as these are not clarified, the city does not wish to comment on the results.
Courts halt minimum-price regulations
The legal difficulties of such regulation are illustrated by several court proceedings in other German cities. In Munich, the city had introduced minimum prices for hire-car companies. The Administrative Court, however, suspended the regulation in an expedited procedure. A key point of contention was the application of the minimum prices to trips that begin or end outside the city limits of Munich. The regulation was also to apply to such transport.
Similar difficulties arose in Essen. There, a corresponding regulation likewise failed due to questions that had not been adequately clarified regarding its application to trips crossing city boundaries.
In Cologne, the city had determined that rental-car companies may undercut the prices of traditional taxi traffic by no more than 20 percent. However, the court criticized the proceedings because the required resolution had not been properly adopted by the city council.
Also in Leipzig, rental-car companies were able to prevail in court against the municipal minimum-price regulation. There the court faulted that the city had not properly exercised its discretion in setting the price floors.
Thus, the previous proceedings reveal different legal problem areas. In addition to the geographical scope of the minimum prices, the municipal decision procedures and the justification of the set charges also play a decisive role.
Political pressure on the Frankfurt city administration
In Frankfurt, in particular the Left party is pushing for regulation of price competition. City councillor Mona Waissi had inquired about the status of the legal opinion and criticized that the magistrate, after the current review, had not yet made a decision on the next steps. The Left demands to limit the competition through ever lower fares. The goal is to equalize the competitive conditions between the traditional taxi trade and the rental-car traffic and to secure the economic livelihood of Frankfurt taxi drivers.
Regulatory Commissioner Schäfer, by contrast, points to the experiences of other municipalities. These require careful legal preparation and weighing.
Decision on minimum prices remains open
Whether and in what form Frankfurt will introduce binding minimum fares for rental car companies remains unclear. First, the commissioned legal opinion must be completed. Only then will it be decided whether the city will pursue such a regulation. What consequences the magistrate would draw if the opinion argues against the proposed introduction of minimum prices remains unclear according to the current state of affairs. (Source: Frankfurter Rundschau)
Criticism from Frankfurt's taxi trade of Uber
How tense the relationship is between parts of Frankfurt's taxi trade and the platform operators is illustrated by a reader's letter to the editors of Taxi Today. In it, a long-standing Frankfurt taxi driver criticizes, according to his statements, the takeover of the local taxi dispatch center by Uber. The author sees in this a contradiction to the industry's previous efforts to assert itself against platform-mediated rental cars. He criticizes in particular the different regulatory frameworks for taxis and rental cars and, in his view, inadequate checks of the statutory return obligation. At the same time, he fears a growing economic dependence of the taxi trade on international intermediary platforms.
The driver therefore calls on his industry colleagues to preserve the independence of the taxi trade and to resist a closer binding to platform companies. The letter to the editor shows that the Frankfurt debate about minimum transport charges goes beyond mere pricing and also touches questions of market structure and entrepreneurial independence.
Editorial note: The alleged takeover of the Frankfurt taxi dispatch center by Uber as well as the mentioned violations of the return obligation are statements of the letter writer and have not been independently verified. The wording takes this limitation into account.
Content automatically translated.
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