Taxi, NCC e servizi innovativi: scrutinio più severo sulla legislazione vincolistica

In Judgment 36/2024, the Constitutional Court raises its sights on anti-competitive legislation on passenger transport-on-demand (taxis and Private Hire Vehicles with drivers). The occasion comes, as in the coeval Order n. 35, from an appeal by the Government against a law of Regione Calabria: paradoxically, the questions raised on regional laws generate others on the corresponding State legislation, which, in this case, is subject to a constitutionally oriented interpretation. This constructive intervention is particularly strong: because it was not indispensable to the decision; because it recalibrates the theory of state competence to set the balance between the protection of competition and other constitutional principles; because of the peremptoriness of the constitutional arguments enunciated and the outcome achieved. In the background, there is an outdated legislation, applied with difficulty even before the advent of digital platforms, but even more obsolete afterwards; and, in the face of all this, the tendency of politics to use extreme care towards the taxi category. The jurisprudence reacts to the resulting problems with increasing firmness; although, on this front, the Constitutional Court has moved in the past and still moves with a certain caution, greater than that of the national antitrust authority and the Court of Justice of the European Union.