Uber Polska on changes from June 2024. Uber warns against eliminating drivers and increasing prices

From June 17 this year, all those who want to work as drivers in companies providing passenger transport services will be required to have a Polish driving license. The change results from the amendment to the Road Traffic Law and certain other acts authored by the Ministry of Digital Affairs. The amendment entered into force on July 1 last year, but the provisions contained in the Road Transport Act that it changed, which concern the obligation to have a national driving license, come into force 12 months from the date of announcement.

Uber Polska warns against the effects of new regulations. Uber, next to Bolt and FreeNow, is the most popular applications for ordering rides.

“There is already a shortage of 150,000 professional drivers in Poland, and the new regulations will significantly limit access to the taxi market for foreign workers. In the largest cities, up to 30 percent of drivers who make almost 50 percent of taxi trips using the app will be eliminated from the market.” – said Iwona Kruk, spokeswoman for Uber Polska, in a response sent to the editorial office of the “Polska i Świat” magazine on TVN24.

She added that “according to the latest report issued by the TOR Economic Advisory Team, this may result in a price increase of up to 50 percent.”

Kruk also pointed out that “the issuance of the document itself should theoretically take 30 days, but in practice it takes up to 6 months.”

Moreover – as she noted – “changes related to the obligation to have a Polish driving license were designed as part of solutions to improve travel safety.” “In practice, personal driver checks that companies like ours must conduct, as well as verifying drivers' identities in real time and exchanging information about deactivated drivers between platforms, are already effective,” said the Uber Polska spokeswoman.

Rafał Grodzicki, head of the Department of State Examinations and examiner of the Warsaw Provincial Road Traffic Center, recently informed that the exams that drivers who want to transport passengers after June 17 will have to pass depend on what country they come from and whether they are subject to the Geneva Convention or the Vienna Convention. .

– Most driving license exchanges will involve passing theoretical exams – pointed out Grodzicki. He added that this applies, for example, to drivers from Ukraine or Belarus. As he noted, the theoretical exam for a category B driving license can be taken in Polish, English, German or Ukrainian.

The amendment to the Road Traffic Law and some other acts is a response to the wave of crimes that occurred in the so-called taxis on the app.

The amended regulation obliges entrepreneurs intermediating in road transport, among others, to: to verify drivers who perform transport before starting cooperation and ordering the first transport – by personal appearance, including their identity (consolidation of image), qualifications (driving license) and no criminal record; verification of documents authorizing you to drive a vehicle, and in the case of Polish documents, to check their authenticity.

Pursuant to the regulation, an entrepreneur conducting intermediation in the transport of passengers may process information regarding persons performing transport for 5 years, counting from the end of the calendar year in which the driver ended cooperation with a given entrepreneur.

The Act also increases penalties – up to PLN 1 million – for entrepreneurs acting as intermediaries in transport and for persons performing transport for violating the obligations provided for in the Act. The Act provides for a number of violations that will be punished, e.g. acting as an intermediary in the transport of persons without the required license – PLN 500,000, and for failure to present and make available for inspection the device on which the mobile application is installed – PLN 12,000.