The EU's decision to categorise Uber as a taxi company shows how old-fashioned it is - Independent

20/12/2017

The EU's decision to categorise Uber as a taxi company shows how old-fashioned it is

Like with Google, Facebook and Amazon, the bureaucrats and the lawyers are finding it much more difficult to deal with these new disruptive technologies than consumers

Sean O'Grady @_seanogrady

The EU has decided to categorise Uber as a taxi company

Once upon a time Luddites were easy to identify. The original early 19th-century machine-breakers, fearful that new technology would destroy their jobs and lives, went around in rough workers’ clothes and left slogans behind about their fictional leader “Ned Ludd”, “Captain Ludd” or “King Ludd”. Later on these forces of industrial conservatism evolved into trade unions, and were recognised, and feared, at the very mention of their titles – “shop steward”, “convenor”, “general secretary”.

All that has now passed into irrelevance, their grim warnings and anxieties replaced by centuries of capitalist progress. Today, though, we have new Luddites: bureaucrats dressed in smart suits or lawyers in judicial robes, all highly educated and eloquent, but all the direct spiritual descendants of the guys who roamed the countryside of England smashing textile machines a couple of centuries ago.

So it is, then, that Uber, the greatest boon in personal transportation since the Model T-Ford, will be smashed by these new enemies of change. The European Court of Justice, never the most modernist of institutions, has loftily decided that Uber is in fact a taxi firm, rather than a technology company, and should be regulated (usually more stringently) as such. Immediately the flexible work that Uber has provided for drivers will disappear; soon the service that has provided.

The revolution is over.

European Union categorises Uber as a taxi company forcing strict regulations, by admin

Uber ban: What taxi app alternatives do Londoners have?

The decision is wrong, and not simply for the effect it will have on peoples’ quality of life – it will also compromise the fees the drivers earn and the access to a normally safe and economical service.

The decision is wrong because the Court posed for itself a binary choice. Is Uber a taxi firm or a technology or software company? How about neither? How about if it is, in fact, something we’ve not seen before – a company that has characteristics of a number of different traditional business models, but represents in itself an entirely new business model, not suited to old regulations?

Like with Google, Facebook and Amazon, the bureaucrats and the lawyers are finding it much more difficult to deal with these new disruptive technologies than consumers, who, to put it at its simplest, just download the app, use it and love it.

Legislators and tax authorities, too, find it difficult to deal with them because they represent a way of adding value to services that has not been done before. As usual technology and private enterprise have sprinted ahead of where the politicians, bureaucrats and lawyers are. The reaction, as ever, is to try to slow down progress.

The truth is that Uber is no more a taxi firm than, say, Toyota, who provide most of the Priuses these drivers seem to favour. No one (you’d hope) would pretend that Toyota should take responsibility for the “tools” or capital equipment by which taxi drivers make a living. Nor should Uber. The Toyota Prius is the hardware, the Uber the software; simple as that.

Second is a broad economic argument in favour of deregulation and allowing enterprise and innovation to take its course. It’s probably true that Uber is making life more difficult for more traditional “mini cab” firms, but then they, in turn, made life more difficult for the older cab trade.

Uber ordered to treat drivers as workers with employment rights after losing appeal

Just as the web made life more challenging for TV, and TV threatened radio, and radio once threatened newspapers. Supposedly. And yet all have, in one form or other, survived through adapting to the new conditions. The point about disruptive technologies is that they are just that. We just need to accept that the long experience of humankind shows us that “disruptive” isn’t always bad for society as a whole.

Unless we – especially in post-Brexit Britain – embrace change, new technologies and new business models, then our economic prospects will be dismal indeed. Global Britain’s capital, London, is not going to be a very impressive place to live and work if its mayor simply bans Uber and tells people to catch the night bus instead.

I am braced for the modern-day Luddites who will attack me for ignoring the personal safety of people, especially women, who have been attacked by Uber drivers, and ignoring Uber’s shortcomings in vetting those who sue its services.

Well, I am not complacent about that; and of course women need to be confident that when they get into a car with an Uber driver they will get home safely. A separate regulatory regime for a new business model such as Uber could accommodate that.

I just think of all those who find themselves in some corner of London or any other place on a dark cold night, maybe the worse for wear, far away from a cab they can hail or a bus or train home, and who just want to get home in one piece and quickly, and, yes, cheaply. Why would we want to regulate that option out of existence?

White House temporarily removes "We the People" petition tool - CBS News

December 20, 2017, 8:08 AM

White House temporarily removes "We the People" petition tool

President Trump speaks during a signing ceremony for Space Policy Directive 1, with the aim of returning Americans to the moon, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 11, 2017.

WASHINGTON — The White House is temporarily removing a petition tool from its website after 11 months of silence, promising to respond to public concerns next year.

The Trump administration said the platform, used extensively by critics and less frequently by allies, will be removed at midnight Tuesday and return in late January as a new site.

A White House official said all existing petitions and responses will be restored next year, when petitions that reach the required 100,000 signatures will begin receiving responses.

The Trump administration has yet to respond to any of the 17 petitions that have reached that threshold since Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017.

Among them are petitions calling on President Donald Trump to release his tax returns and to place his assets in a blind trust. Others that have reached 100,000 signatures call on Trump to both preserve and cease funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The official said the move will save taxpayers $1.3 million annually. Initially named "We the People" by the Obama administration, the site launched in 2011.

London Stansted Cracks Long-Haul With Emirates Route to Dubai - Bloomberg

London Stansted Cracks Long-Haul With Emirates Route to Dubai

By Christopher Jasper

December 20, 2017

Discount hub’s first eastern intercontinental route opens June

Gulf carrier says flights will help tap tech, pharma business

London’s Stansted airport, best known as the biggest base of Ryanair Holdings Plc, will achieve its long-held ambition of expanding into long-haul flights with a major carrier next year after Mideast giant Emirates announced the opening of a route to Dubai.

Emirates, the world’s largest intercontinental airline, will commence daily services from the Persian Gulf sheikdom to Stansted starting next June using Boeing Co. 777-300ER jetliners, it said in a statement Wednesday.

Stansted is London’s third-largest airport and the fourth-busiest in the U.K., but had previously failed to attract network carriers after becoming established as Europe’s top discount hub. Manchester Airports Group, which bought Stansted for 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion) in 2013, stepped up its pitch by introducing perks such as valet parking, fast-track security and airport lounges.

Ken O’Toole, who runs Stansted, said the move by Emirates will provide a “crucial” boost for U.K. connectivity as the country prepares to leave the European Union. The airport, located 35 miles north of London, is attractive partly because its runway has plenty of room for more flights, unlike the capital’s capacity-constrained Heathrow and Gatwick hubs.

Stansted’s existing non-European offerings are limited to a handful of charter flights, with Nordic low-cost operator Primera planning to add routes to Boston, New York and Toronto also starting next year.

Emirates said it was attracted to Stansted by a catchment area that includes the technology and pharmaceutical hubs of Cambridge and Peterborough in eastern England and major operations at companies such as AstraZeneca Plc, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Airbus SE, which has a satellite factory in nearby Stevenage.

About 7.5 million people currently travel to eastbound long-haul destinations from the area using other departure points, Stansted estimates. The airport, which attracted 24 million passengers in 2016, an increase of almost 9 percent, will become the Gulf carrier’s seventh U.K. gateway, after Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow.

House to vote again on tax bill; Trump on verge of win - Reuters

DECEMBER 19, 2017 / 10:02 PM

House to vote again on tax bill; Trump on verge of win

David Morgan, Amanda Becker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday was expected to give final approval to a sweeping tax bill and send it to President Donald Trump to sign into law, sealing his first major legislative victory in office.

In the largest overhaul of the U.S. tax code in 30 years, Republicans in mere weeks steamrolled over the opposition of Democrats to slash taxes for corporations and the wealthy, while offering mixed, temporary tax relief to working American individuals and families.

The Senate approved the bill in the wee hours of Wednesday morning on a 51-48 vote, but had to send it back to the House, which had passed it on Tuesday, for another vote due to a procedural foul-up that embarrassed Republicans, but was not expected to change the outcome. The vote was expected to take place before noon in the House on Wednesday.

The sprawling, debt-financed legislation cuts the U.S. corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, gives other business owners a new 20 percent deduction on business income and reshapes how the government taxes multinational corporations along the lines the country’s largest businesses have recommended for years.

Millions of Americans would stop itemizing deductions under the bill, putting tax breaks that incentivize home ownership and charitable donations out of their reach, but also making tax returns somewhat simpler and shorter.

It keeps the present number of tax brackets, but adjusts many, though not all, of the rates and income levels for each one. The top tax rate for high earners is reduced. The estate tax on inheritances is changed so far fewer people will pay.

In two provisions added on to secure needed Republican votes, it also repeals part of the Obamacare health system and allows oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Democrats have railed against the legislation as a giveaway to the wealthy and the business community that will widen the income gap between rich and poor, while adding $1.5 trillion over the next decade to the $20 trillion national debt, which Trump promised in 2016 he would eliminate as president.

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said the bill “will harm millions of middle-class families ... It contains huge, permanent giveaways for big banks and corporations, and asks our children, millions of working Americans and senior citizens, and future generations to pay the price.”

A few Republicans, whose party was once defined by its fiscal hawkishness, have protested the deficit-spending encompassed in the bill. But most of them have voted for it anyway, saying it would help businesses and individuals, while boosting an already expanding economy they see as not growing fast enough.

“We’ve had two quarters in a row of 3 percent growth. The stock market is up. Optimism is high. Coupled with this tax reform, America is ready to start performing as it should have for a number of years,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell after the chamber’s vote.

Despite Trump administration promises that the tax overhaul would focus on the middle class and not cut taxes for the rich, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, estimated middle-income households would see an average tax cut of $900 next year under the bill, while the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans would see an average cut of $51,000.

The prospect of a Republican victory was tinged with embarrassment. House lawmakers initially voted 227-203, largely along party lines, to approve the bill on Tuesday afternoon.

The measure went to the Senate, where the parliamentarian ruled three minor provisions in violation of an arcane Senate rule. To proceed, the Senate deleted the three provisions and then approved the bill.

Because the House and Senate must approve the same legislation before Trump can sign it into law, the Senate’s late Tuesday vote only ping-ponged the bill back to the House.

The measure was expected to pass again in a vote by midday.

In an overnight post on Twitter Trump said he would hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) if the House approves it.

Democrats pounced on the mistake as evidence of the hurried, often secretive process used by Republicans in developing the bill. Ignoring Democrats and much of their own rank-and-file, Republican congressional leaders and White House officials drafted the bill behind closed doors, unveiling it on Sept. 27.

No public hearings were held and numerous narrow amendments favored by lobbyists were added late in the process, tilting the package more toward businesses and the wealthy.

“When future generations look back at the short and messy history of the Republican tax bill, its most enduring lesson will be what it has taught us about how not to legislate,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor.

Tax bill's 'pass-through' rule will aid wealthy, not workers: critics - Reuters

DECEMBER 20, 2017 / 10:03 PM /

Tax bill's 'pass-through' rule will aid wealthy, not workers: critics

Amanda Becker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wealthy business owners, such as President Donald Trump, stand to gain from a provision in the Republican tax bill that creates a valuable deduction for owners of pass-through businesses, Democrats and some tax experts say.

President Donald Trump speaks via video teleconference with troops from Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, November 23, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Thayer

The provision creates a 20-percent business income deduction, with some limits, for sole proprietors and owners in partnerships and other non-corporate enterprises.

It was initially sold by Republicans as a way to help small businesses and create jobs. But the final formula for determining what types of businesses can benefit has widened to take in companies with few, if any, workers, critics said.

“The president will try to tell the American people that his great political victory is a win for working people, but they see all the benefits going to his type of businesses: real estate pass-throughs,” Democratic Senator Jack Reed said on the Senate floor.

Trump, a real estate developer, wants to sign the Republican tax bill into law this week, which would give Republicans their first major legislative victory of 2017. The House of Representatives and Senate were hurrying toward passage of the bill on Tuesday, with a final House vote set for Wednesday.

On House Speaker Paul Ryan’s website, he said pass-through businesses employed about half of U.S. private-sector workers.

High tax rates, he said, “discourage investment and job creation, discourage business activity, and put American businesses at a competitive disadvantage.”

PASSING THROUGH

Pass-through businesses’ profits “pass through” their books directly to owners, unlike corporations, which parcel out profits through dividends to stockholders.

Under existing law, pass-through owners pay the individual income tax rate on those profits, not the corporate rate. Under the Republican bill, the corporate rate would be slashed to 21 percent, while the top individual income tax rate, which some pass-through business owners pay, would be 37 percent.

To address the disparity, Republicans included tax relief for pass-through owners in their bill, allowing them to deduct 20 percent of their pass-through business income.

Republicans put in anti-abuse measures to ensure owners of bona fide business operations claim the 20 percent deduction and prevent high earners from seeking to recategorize their income as pass-through income to take advantage of the deduction.

Republicans also capped the income eligible for the full 20-percent deduction at $315,000 for married couples and $157,500 for individuals. But they included a “capital element” in the formula for determining eligibility beyond those thresholds, presenting a lucrative tax break for some, including wealthy owners of commercial property, said tax experts.

“This seems ideally suited for commercial property businesses, where there aren’t a lot of workers, but there is a lot of valuable property around,” said Steven Rosenthal, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a think tank.

Income above the pass-through caps can be eligible for the 20-percent deduction based on a formula: 50 percent of employee wages paid; or 25 percent of wages plus 2.5 percent of the value of qualified property at purchase, whichever is greater.

“The idea is to use the sum of the ‘2.5 percent rule’ plus 25 percent of wages ... to get the full 20-percent deduction” on more income, said New York University School of Law Professor Daniel Shaviro, a tax law specialist, in an email.

An assessment of the Republican bill by 13 tax experts, mostly academics, said the formula would “expand the ability of highly paid owners in certain industries – and particularly those heavy in property but light in employees, like real estate – to qualify for the pass-through deduction.”

Additional reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney

How the Trump Tax Cuts Solved the Democrats’ Campaign Problem - Intelligencer ( New York Magazine )

19/12/2017

How the Trump Tax Cuts Solved the Democrats’ Campaign Problem

By

Jonathan Chait

@jonathanchait

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, President Trump, and House Committee on Ways and Means chair Kevin Brady. Photo: Olivier Douliery/Bloomberg via Getty Images

After the 2016 election left Republicans in full control of government, Democrats grappled with one of the messaging challenges Hillary Clinton had faced during it: How to define Donald Trump versus his party? Clinton had opted to present Trump as worse than a normal Republican, a unique personal aberration. (“This is not conservatism as we have known it. This is not Republicanism as we have known it,” she said.) Many Democrats initially opted for the reverse strategy: Embrace Trump as a populist, and use him as a wedge against the plutocratic Republican Congress. “Rebuking Hillary Clinton’s election message and echoing Trump’s populist rhetoric is the way to revive the party,” one party member suggested in the wake of Clinton’s defeat.

Instead, Trump and the congressional Republicans have solved Democrats’ dilemma for them. They have essentially merged into a politically coterminous entity. Trump has absorbed all the liabilities of the congressional party, while his distinctive grossness largely extends to them. Nothing has brought together the union quite so vividly as the tax cuts, Trump’s singular legislative achievement, and one the entire party has greeted almost ecstatically.

A CNN poll provides a map to the themes that have been made available for Democrats to exploit. Of course, it registers deep disapproval both for Trump’s overall job performance (35–59) and for the tax cut (33–55). But that merely offers a superficial glimpse into the difficulty the GOP faces with the public. Delving more deeply actually reveals the situation to be even worse. A mere 21 percent of respondents say the tax cut will make them personally better off; 63 percent say Trump and his family will be made personally better off; 66 percent say it will primarily benefit the wealthy, as opposed to just 27 percent saying it will primarily help the middle class.

The confluence of all these beliefs is quite powerful. Americans see the Republican Party as enriching its donor class, and the president personally, at the expense of the broader public.

Republicans have addressed these liabilities by simply lying about them. They have claimed the bill gives its largest benefits to the middle class, a boast no serious calculation sustains. They’ve described it as “simplification” that would “close loopholes,” when in fact the bill eliminates virtually no tax expenditures whatsoever while adding massive new sources of complexity, gaming, and potential tax evasion. Even the carried-interest loophole, a giveaway to the rich so notorious that Trump promised to end it during the campaign and again this year, was not touched.

Amazingly, the White House continues to support President Trump’s claim that the cuts will increase his personal tax liabilities.

@christinawilkie

Sanders on tax bill: "It likely will, on the personal side, it could cost the president a lot of money."

6:40 AM - Dec 20, 2017

No tax lawyer considers this remotely plausible. And Trump refuses to release his tax returns to substantiate his absurd position.

Here, again, the culpability of the Republican Congress is underestimated. It is not only Trump’s secrecy that has kept his returns hidden. A simple vote by the House of Representatives would compel their disclosure. But Republicans have defeated multiple efforts by the Democratic minority to carry this off. Paul Ryan and the House leadership made the decision to quash these measures in committees, and the vast bulk of the party rank and file supported that decision by refusing to sign a discharge petition to bring the tax-return bill to the floor.

The Republican Party has decided as a whole to enable President Trump to conceal his tax returns, and further decided to pass a tax cut that rewards him personally. They have likewise formed a protective shield against the Russia probe, which is investigating Trump’s opaque ties to the Russian regime and criminal underworld.

The regular Republican Party of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of polluters and the financial industry once seemed to be set apart from its clownish demagogue presidential candidate. In rapid order, the strands have merged together into a party disdainful of transparency and united in self-enrichment.

Russia simulated going to war against NATO, bombing Germany and invading Baltic states during 'West 2017', analysts reveal - Daily Mail

Russia simulated going to war against NATO, bombing Germany and invading Baltic states during 'West 2017', analysts reveal

War games featuring thousands of soldiers took place in Belarus in September

Russia claimed that they were defensive in nature with foreign monitors present

But analysts claim it was a dry-run for a 'shock campaign' against NATO states

'Zapad' drills featured mock invasion of land linking Belarus to Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, analysts said

By JULIAN ROBINSON FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 23:28 AEDT, 20 December 2017

Russia simulated going to war against NATO, bombing Germany and invading Baltic states during its 'West 2017' military exercises, analysts have revealed.

A massive programme of war games featuring tens of thousands of troops and code named 'Zapad' took place near the Belarus capital Minsk in September.

At the time there were fears Moscow was using the training as a cover to station soldiers and equipment in the country.

Analysts from two Western intelligence agencies have now claimed that the exercises, which included artillery, tanks, rocket launches and simulated air and navy raids, were a dry-run for a 'shock campaign' against Western European NATO members.

Russia simulated going to war against NATO, bombing Germany and invading Baltic states during its 'West 2017' military exercises, analysts have revealed. Troops are pictured during the drills

Explosive: Shells explode during the Zapad (West) 2017 Russia-Belarus military exercises at the Borisovsky range in Borisov, Belarus in September

Russia's neighbours claimed at the time that the Kremlin was using the exercises as a rehearsal for an occupation of adjacent nations like Poland,Ukraine or the three Baltic republics - all of which were under Moscow's rule before the Communist Soviet Union broke up in 1991.

Moscow has repeatedly said the exercises, which began on September 14, were purely defensive in nature and were not aimed at targeting a third country or group of countries.

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However, according to German newspaper Bild, analysts said the drills imagined the invasion of the Sulwalki Gap, a small area of NATO land that links Belarus with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. A mock state was created for this invasion drill on a similar stretch of land.

Analysts also claimed Russia practised 'neutralising or taking under control air fields and harbours (in eastern Europe), so there are no reinforcements arriving from other NATO states there'.

Military power: Tanks could be seen rumbling across open land in Belarus - which borders Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. Analysts say the drills were a dry-run for a 'shock campaign' against Western European NATO members

Analysts also claimed Russia practised 'neutralising or taking under control air fields and harbours (in eastern Europe), so there are no reinforcements arriving from other NATO states there'

Analysts also claimed Russia practised 'neutralising or taking under control air fields and harbours (in eastern Europe), so there are no reinforcements arriving from other NATO states there'

The analysts also said that the country's air force flew through the North Sea and past Germany and the Netherlands for two days to rehearse taking out the likes of airports, power reactors and naval bases.

At the time, the Kremlin said it had provided exhaustive information on the exercises before they were held to the military attaches of all interested countries and allowed their observers to attend the event to allay any concerns.

But Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo voiced disquiet at the exercises and said Warsaw opposed any lifting of Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and role in its separatist conflict.

'We are very concerned by what is happening in Belarus, from the exercises there,' Szydlo said during a visit to Bulgaria.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite made the exercises the centrepiece of her annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

'Even as we speak, around 100,000 Russian troops are engaged in offensive military exercise "Zapad 2017" on the borders of the Baltic States, Poland and even in the Arctic,' she said at the time.

'The Kremlin is rehearsing aggressive scenarios against its neighbours, training its army to attack the West. The exercise is also part of information warfare aimed at spreading uncertainty and fear.'

Uber is officially a cab firm, says European court - BBC News

20/12/2017

Uber is officially a cab firm, says European court

Uber is officially a transport company and not a digital service, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.

The ride-hailing firm argued it was an information society service - helping people to make contact with each other electronically - and not a cab firm.

The case arose after Uber was told to obey local taxi rules in Barcelona.

Uber said the verdict would make little difference to the way it operated in Europe, but experts say the case could have implications for the gig economy.

An Uber spokesperson said: "This ruling will not change things in most EU countries where we already operate under transportation law.

"However, millions of Europeans are still prevented from using apps like ours. As our new CEO has said, it is appropriate to regulate services such as Uber and so we will continue the dialogue with cities across Europe. This is the approach we'll take to ensure everyone can get a reliable ride at the tap of a button."

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In its ruling, the ECJ said that a service whose purpose was "to connect, by means of a smartphone application and for remuneration, non-professional drivers using their own vehicle with persons who wish to make urban journeys" must be classified as "a service in the field of transport" in EU law.

It added: "As EU law currently stands, it is for the member states to regulate the conditions under which such services are to be provided in conformity with the general rules of the treaty on the functioning of the EU."

Presentational grey line

Analysis: Theo Leggett, BBC business correspondent

Uber app on a smartphoneImage copyrightEPA

This ruling is another example of how the courts and regulators are struggling to make sense of the phenomenon known as the gig economy.

Since Uber was first launched less than a decade ago, it has repeatedly fallen foul of regulators in different countries - and has frequently been forced to change its business model as a result.

This ruling sets out clearly that Uber is, in legal terms at least, a transport company. Uber itself insists that there won't be a huge immediate impact on its business, but it could still affect how it operates in future and how it liaises with national governments.

Uber itself has previously said this will undermine the reform of what it calls outdated laws.

On a wider basis, it could have implications for other gig economy businesses that try to portray themselves as little more than an app on a phone, connecting providers with customers; it appears the courts, so far, are taking a different view.

That could ultimately have an impact, not just on ride-hailing services, but on other gig economy services - such as couriers and accommodation providers - who operate a similar model.

Presentational grey line

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said the verdict meant Uber must "play by the same rules as everybody else".

She added: "Their drivers are not commodities. They deserve at the very least the minimum wage and holiday pay.

"Advances in technology should be used to make work better, not to return to the type of working practices we thought we'd seen the back of decades ago."

The verdict comes after Uber was told last month that the appeal to renew its licence in London could take years, according to Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Benefits

Uber's presence around the world has often been controversial, with protests staged against it in various cities.

However, Rohan Silva, a tech entrepreneur and former adviser to David Cameron, says the firm has made competitors up their game.

"Millions of people use these ride-hailing apps every day - not just Uber, but dozens of others too. They have brought real benefits, making it cheaper, easier and more convenient to get around the city," he told Radio 4's Today programme.

"There has also been a benefit in incumbent London taxi cabs, which are now taking credit cards, which they resisted for years. That is a response to competition."

He added that similar services could soon face regulation as a result of the ECJ ruling.

"There could be big implications for a sharing economy service like Airbnb, which will probably be regulated by the EU," he said.

"What is fascinating about this right now is that different countries are taking very different views. Portugal has legalised Uber and Airbnb, whereas France is clamping down."

Prof Andre Spicer, from the Cass Business School, welcomed the ruling. He told Today: "Many people see the EU is actually leading the way in pushing back the almost unlimited power of tech firms and beginning to provide some limits around that.

"We also claim this fosters competition, but what Uber's model is based on is pricing, so much that they basically drove everyone else out of the market.

"This judgement will allow normal competition, so what we will see is lots of other smaller apps appearing around Europe."