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VSPV Managing Director Sascha Waltemate on Uber, taxis and the matter of democracy
It is a strange experience for me to read a public broadcasting opinion piece in which central terms of our political culture are used with a kind of linguistic sloppiness one would expect more at the bar than in a newsroom. In connection with Uber and comparable platforms, Ms. Tran says they have “democratized” ride services. That is not only a dubious metaphor but simply a mistake.
Democratization does not mean cheap at any price
“Democracy,” throughout its conceptual history, denotes the participation of citizens in rule and legislation—from the Attic polis through Rousseau to the Federal Republic. What is democratic is what is grounded in elections, deliberation, representation, and rulemaking. That has nothing to do with “cheap” or “easily available via app.” So if you take a service that was previously considered expensive and make it accessible to broad segments through wage dumping, it has not been democratized but at best has become plebeian. In Rome, the plebs had access to grain handouts, bread and circuses—but no democratic say. Anyone who today glorifies dumping prices as “democratization” is making the same category error. I am, however, inclined to give Ms. Tran the benefit of the doubt, since, owing to her Bavarian-Swabian migration background, German is not her native language.
The irony is that taxis, of all things, are actually democratically constituted in Germany—and specifically through their prices and obligations. The fares are not set by corporations, not by algorithms, and not by an AI at a U.S. tech company, but by municipal parliaments: city and county councils that all of us elected just a few days ago in the local elections decide the taxi fares. In public meetings, on the basis of administrative drafts, after hearings with associations and stakeholders, in a process that is transparent, verifiable, and democratically legitimized. So if the term “democratization” applies anywhere in the industry, it’s to taxis—not to Uber and other platform providers.
Minimum fares are a successful model
Yet the linguistic misstep is not the only one. The WDR piece also claims that Essen is “the second city after Heidelberg” with minimum fares for private hire vehicles. That’s not even formally correct—Heidelberg was indeed the first independent city, if one wanted to ignore Leipzig’s trial and withdrawal; Essen followed. What is glossed over, however, is that the district of Lörrach introduced such a minimum fare as early as 2022—covering 8 towns and 27 municipalities. This is not a mere appendage to the decisions in Heidelberg and Essen (and previously Leipzig), but the first fully-fledged implementation in Germany. Anyone who omits Lörrach paints the picture of an exotic exception. In fact, Lörrach shows that minimum fares are not an experimental curiosity, but an already well-established practice that is now being adopted by more and more major cities and districts—at different stages of development.
Even more serious is that the piece, if not conceals then at least downplays the causes of the price differences between taxis and Uber. They are not rooted in the app, not in user-friendliness, but in a business model based on wage dumping. Taxis operate under a fare that, by public determination and often confirmed by expert reports, is calculated so that drivers and operators can make a living from their work; the corresponding provisions of passenger transport law ensure this. Uber rides are often up to 50% cheaper—and this differential can only arise because drivers and the intermediary private hire companies externalize costs.
- Minimum wage and working time: In Berlin and Frankfurt, main customs offices found widespread violations. Drivers were employed at hourly wages below the minimum wage, working time regulations were systematically circumvented.
- False self-employment: Many drivers are formally “self-employed” but in reality subject to instructions. This strips them of labor-law protections; social insurance obligations are evaded.
- Illegal licenses: In Frankfurt, a network was uncovered in early 2025 that operated around 600 vehicles using forged private hire licenses—causing damage in the millions. In Berlin, a 2024 data comparison revealed around 1,600 vehicles operating in the Uber system without a valid permit. Since stricter controls began there, the number of private hire licenses has collapsed by about half—evidence that widespread illegal structures had previously been at work.
The facts are clear: the low prices are not a sign of efficiency, but of antisocial non-compliance.
Platform does not mean "freedom"
It is one of the peculiarities of our debate that platform models in particular like to adorn themselves with the buzzwords of freedom and progress, while taxis are supposedly relics of a rigid order. A closer look, however, reveals: this "rigidity" is nothing other than legally anchored reliability—and it has been democratically enacted.
Under German law, a taxi is not just any car with a driver, but an integral part of local public transport and thus of public services of general interest. This status is founded on three core obligations:
- Duty to operate (§ 21 PBefG): A taxi operator may not simply withdraw at will when things get inconvenient. They are obliged to establish and maintain operations—even in times of weak demand. The taxi infrastructure is not supposed to collapse just because it is not economically worthwhile.
- Duty to carry (§ 22 PBefG): Within the mandatory service area, the driver must as a rule carry any passenger who wishes to be carried. No picking and choosing, no discrimination, no arbitrary refusal of a short trip. It is this duty that ensures that older people with shopping bags, wheelchair users, or night owls can take a taxi.
- Tariff obligation (§§ 39, 51 PBefG): Prices are not left to the free play of market forces but are officially fixed. The passenger does not pay too much, the operator may not offer too cheaply, but must charge by taximeter at the authority-set fare, which may neither be exceeded nor undercut. The price is therefore not only calculable, but also democratically legitimized: it is adopted by the municipal representative bodies that we all elect.
These three obligations fundamentally distinguish taxis from private hire vehicles. Uber drivers can refuse jobs, their prices fluctuate algorithmically, their availability depends on platform logic and individual whim. The taxi, by contrast, is available, obligated, reliable. That is precisely what makes it an element of public services of general interest.
Taxi is local public transport
The Federal Constitutional Court recognized this early on as well. As early as 1960—in a widely noted decision—it classified taxi transport as a public means of transport and as a community asset worthy of protection within the meaning of the Basic Law. The objective admission barriers in passenger transport law, which regulate market entry, were expressly justified with reference to the protection of overriding public-interest goods. Since then, this approach has been affirmed and consolidated in case law: the taxi is not merely a private trade, but a community asset whose proper functioning it is the state's task to safeguard.
That is precisely why these obligations exist, precisely why there are minimum prices, and precisely why competition-endangering dumping models are not only economically questionable, but, already for reasons of services of general interest and the public interest in transport, a problem.
Uber and co. were ahead on the app front
But we also have to face the facts: The taxi industry did in fact initially miss the boat on digitalization—Ms. Tran is quite right about that. While dispatch platforms were already shining early on with an app, many dispatch centers and taxi companies still relied on the phone and radio. The convenient push of a button on a smartphone made an impression, and the public narrative was quickly spun: modernity here, a fossil there.
But anyone who thinks the app is the source of the price difference is wrong. The mode of dispatch does not determine the cost structure. A ride doesn’t cost twice as much because it’s dispatched by radio instead of via icon, but because taxis are subject to obligations that Uber private-hire vehicles systematically do not have: duty to operate, duty to carry, regulated fares; in return, the private-hire vehicle has a return-to-base requirement, and jobs may only be accepted at the operator’s place of business (or residence). Whether the private-hire vehicles operating for platform providers actually live by that is very much in doubt. Yet all of that remains the same whether a trip is dispatched by phone call or by click.
And yes: digitalization is not a luxury but a necessity. In this regard, the industry is now showing that it has learned its lesson. At the Westphalian Taxi and Private-Hire Day 2025, the VSPV-Standard 101 was recently presented—an unassuming abbreviation that conceals a small revolution.
A unified standard creates certainty
This standard is a unified data model for the entire for-hire transport sector. What was previously fragmented and incompatible—every dispatch center, every network, every other actor with its own interfaces—is thereby harmonized. Three dimensions are decisive:
- Integration into public transport apps: In future, taxis and licensed private-hire vehicles will no longer appear as foreign bodies alongside buses and trains, but as equal building blocks. The passenger opens the app of the municipal transport operator or their transport association and sees not only bus timetables but also available taxis in real time—bookable directly within the system. This is how intermodality becomes reality.
- Healthcare transport: Medical practices, hospitals, control centers will in future be able to transmit patient transport orders digitally to taxi companies directly from their software systems. That means less paper, fewer misunderstandings, greater efficiency—and at the same time clear billing data that make abuse more difficult.
- Billing and oversight: Uniform data sets make it possible to settle services more quickly, transparently and verifiably. Both the authority and the health insurer can see immediately what was driven, at what price, with what authorization.
What does that mean? That the industry is making up the supposed deficit—with an open, standardized system that does not follow the profit logic of a single platform, but the logic of the public transport association.
So anyone who again claims that Uber has “democratized” because it has an app should know this: the taxi has not only caught up, but with the VSPV-Standard 101 has created a systemic advance. It is not one company that controls access, but a standard that opens it for everyone. That is not market trickery; it is digital infrastructure policy—and precisely for that reason a genuinely democratic step forward.
Wage dumping is not democratic!
Let’s not downplay it: Even an expression of opinion depends on a minimum of fidelity to facts. A public broadcaster in particular, funded by contributions from all citizens, cannot afford the luxury of twisting terms and suppressing realities. Anyone who says “democratized” when they mean “plebeianized” lends dumping the appearance of political emancipation. Anyone who conceals the fact that Lörrach, with its eight towns and 27 municipalities, introduced minimum fares as early as 2022 turns an already established practice into an exotic novelty. Anyone who ignores the documented legal violations in Berlin and Frankfurt—illegal vehicles, forged licenses, systematic minimum wage violations—trivializes a business model based on structural flight from the law. And anyone who reduces the difference between taxis and private-hire vehicles to the form of dispatch conceals duty to operate, regulated fares, duty to carry, and the Constitutional Court–affirmed designation of taxis as a community good worthy of protection.
Regulation serves the common good
All of that may not matter to the individual passenger as long as they get their ride for half the price. But that is precisely the mistake: regulation does not aim at the consumer’s momentary feel-good factor, but at the long-term common good. The fact that the state controls prices, enforces minimum wages, prosecutes property crimes or sanctions public urination does not happen because the individual wants it, but because the community demands it. Even the Code of Hammurabi recognized this principle. Anyone who overlooks that in transport reduces society to the instant of the cheaper click. The taxi, by contrast—with all its obligations—stands for a different logic: reliability, fairness, democratic legitimacy. It is not a perfect system, but one that is, in its structure, committed to the common good. That is exactly why municipalities have begun to set minimum prices for private-hire vehicles. That is exactly why the industry is developing standards such as the VSPV-Standard 101, which create integration, transparency and parity.
And that is precisely why it is dangerous when a public broadcaster acts so carelessly in language and substance. Words have an impact: anyone who glosses dumping as “democratization,” who omits Lörrach where Lörrach was a pioneer, who mocks the taxi as a fossil while platforms in truth systematize lawbreaking—contributes to turning the asymmetry of language into an asymmetry of reality.
Journalists—mind the facts!
But the duty of journalism, especially public-service journalism, is to ensure that this does not happen. The duty is to sharpen terms, verify facts, and ground opinions in substance. Democracy is not a discount code, but the procedural form of governance worth living in—and it dies from confusing cheap with freedom.
Content automatically translated.
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