Portugal's Taxi Associations Head for the Constitutional Court Over the Ride-Hailing Law the President Just Signed

Portugal's two largest taxi bodies say the ride-hailing law President Antonio Jose Seguro signed this week is unconstitutional, and they intend to get the Constitutional Court to say so. ANTRAL, the national road transport association for light vehicles, and the Federacao Portuguesa do Taxi issued a joint statement on Friday attacking the revision of Lei 45/2018, the law governing vehicles hired through electronic platforms, known in Portugal as TVDE.

The clause they object to

The complaint turns on a single change. Under the revised law, a vehicle licensed to operate as a taxi may also be assigned, alternately, to TVDE work, provided it meets the requirements applying to TVDE vehicles and is registered with a licensed platform manager. When parliament approved the overhaul in July, that clause was presented as a lifeline for taxi drivers losing work to Uber and Bolt.

The associations read it the other way round. A taxi keeps its public service obligations, its municipal licence, its specific vehicle and driver requirements and the charges that come with all of it. Letting the same car also work the TVDE market, they argue, deregulates the taxi market from the inside and creates "an unjustified competitive advantage" and "inequality between operators". They also object to "the substantial alteration of market access conditions" and to "the use of a public licence for two activities with different regimes".

Their legal hook is Lei 10/90 of 17 March, the framework law of the Land Transport System, and specifically its principles of broad and healthy competition and of fair and equal treatment between transport undertakings. A framework law of that kind carries weight in constitutional argument because it sets the structural principles later legislation is meant to respect.

The route to the court is indirect

Trade associations cannot walk into the Constitutional Court. Abstract review of a law already in force can only be requested by a short list of office-holders: the President, the Speaker, the Prime Minister, the Ombudsman, the Attorney-General, a tenth of MPs and, in some cases, regional bodies. The associations acknowledge this, saying they will seek review "indirectly, by the legal means at their disposal".

In practice that means two things. They are weighing complaints to the Provedor de Justica, the Ombudsman, who can refer a law to the court. And they are pressing the AMT, the mobility and transport regulator, to act, the same regulator that postponed new taxi fare rules earlier this month precisely so they would land after this law took effect. Failing that, the question can reach the court concretely, through an ordinary case in which a party challenges the norm being applied to them.

The associations also made clear they are unhappy with the President, whom they had asked to veto the diploma and who, they say, "disregarded" their appeals.

Nobody is happy

The striking part is that the platform side dislikes the law too. On Wednesday, Ivo Fernandes of APTAD, the association representing TVDE operators, told Lusa that the promulgated text keeps the sector "highly wronged, completely under the domination of the platforms". He had also asked the President for a veto, on the grounds that the law creates a grave distortion of competition. Both camps now say the same law disadvantages them.

What this means for you

• If you take taxis or ride-hailing: nothing changes yet. The law is promulgated but still needs implementing regulation, and the associations say they will contest that stage too.
• If you drive a taxi: the dual-use option is now legally available, but your association is arguing against the very clause that opens it. Watch the regulation for the conditions attached.
• If you drive for a platform: the Portuguese language requirement and the other driver rules from the overhaul are unaffected by this challenge.
• If you are watching the timetable: a constitutional referral, if it happens, would not automatically suspend the law. Successive review can strike a norm down after the fact.