The wrath of the coach drivers: 'Salvini decrees sink the sector'

The appointment is for Thursday 29 February in Rome, in front of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport at Porta Pia in Rome: cars, drivers and Ncc (Noleggio con conducente) entrepreneurs in the square to protest against Minister Matteo Salvini, accused of playing along with taxi drivers to put the category in crisis by introducing business-killing regulations and penalising constraints. The tool to bring this manoeuvre to fruition, after a years-long melt-down, is the 'regulatory package' - two ministerial decrees (on electronic register and electronic service sheet) and a Dpcm (on technological platforms) - intended to fully implement (with a long delay) Law No. 12, which back in 2019, at the time of the Yellow-Green government, amended the framework law on non-scheduled transport.

The mobilisation, promoted by the Comitato Air, Anitrav, Sistema Trasporti, Associazione Ncc Italia and Asincc Sicilia, the most representative unions of the Ncc sector, comes on the heels of the last MIT-Taxi-Ncc table. The meeting, deserted in protest by the five Ncc unions, had on the agenda the presentation of draft measures - in particular the Ministerial Decree on the compilation of the electronic service sheet - and a series of explanatory slides that did not go down well with the Ncc.

Not to be liked are, for example, the obligation for hire car drivers to allow at least one hour to elapse between customers. And the impossibility, again for coach drivers, in practice, to agree on transport services departing from a place other than the garage. Above all, the ministry would aim to introduce a ban on the use of any form of intermediation, including those generated by cooperatives and consortia, for the conclusion of transport contracts connected to one or more Ncc services.

This also means a stop to transport services agreed via apps, travel agencies, or through a colleague who refers a client to you. "The most important tour operators and travel agencies will be able to sell Ncc services anywhere in the world except in Italy," explains a note in which the five unions "reject the draft in its entirety" and call for an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is expected to sign part of the regulatory package under indictment. The note also warns of the risk of 'scientifically dismantling a sector that accounts for 1.5 billion euro and could potentially reach 6 billion: we are at the violation of the freedom of movement of businesses and people who do not want to know about driving or being transported by a taxi'.

Inaugurated at the beginning of the month by Salvini himself precisely in order to give full operativeness to the regulatory dictate that six years ago made the issuing of new authorisations for Ncc services conditional on the launch of a National Public Computer Register (Ren), the MIT-taxi-Ncc table is proceeding in forced stages: it met on 8, 15 and 22 February, and is also convened for 27 February. The European elections are just around the corner, and according to Giulio Aloisi (Anitrav) 'the go-ahead for the regulatory package on the regulation of the chauffeur-driven hire sector is a move by the minister to secure the favour, and the votes, of the taxi drivers, who have always been against an increase in Ncc licences'. The bloc of Ncc associations - he concludes - disputes the regulations in the pipeline for the electronic service sheet "because they unnecessarily complicate the lives of companies in the rental sector, and only serve to paralyse their operations to the benefit of the taxi world".