Some 6,000 taxis, buses, and minibuses are expected to participate in the protests the Confederation of Licensed Transport Operators in Romania (COTAR) will organize in Bucharest on Wednesday and Thursday.

They will protest against piracy and other unauthorized transport activities, including ride sharing app Uber, COTAR said in a statement cited by local News.ro.

The protests, which were authorized by the City Hall and will take place between 09:30 and 21:00, will be staged in front of the Government building, in Victoriei Square. In this period, the taxis and buses that will participate in the protest will not make any trips. Moreover, the protests might affect the traffic in the area.

“On March 10, transport minister Razvan Cuc promised to promote the Emergency Ordinance to amend two articles of the Law 38/2003 so that unauthorized transport activity would be sanctioned, and Uber-like apps would have to be authorized to operate legally if they want to carry out their activity in Romania. As long as there is a clear legislation, it’s no longer possible for some carriers to obey the law while others defy the same legislation and operate without being penalized,” reads the COTAR statement.

The carriers say that the Emergency Ordinance in question is still pending approval, and want the market to remain open only for companies that get the license to operate certain routes via auctions. According to COTAR, these companies should benefit from monopoly on those routes.

“We want the online technology platforms that provide unauthorized taxi services to be outlawed, as it happened in European countries where the state wanted to protect its licensed carriers. We request the outlawing of all online platforms that provide undeclared, unlicensed, and unauthorized transport services,” COTAR said in its statement.

COTAR announced at the end of March that it would organize protests in April if the Government failed to adopt an Emergency Ordinance to eliminate piracy and other unauthorized transport activities, such as Uber.

The taxi companies have been unhappy with Uber ever since the ride-sharing app started to become very popular among Romanians, thus becoming a serious competitor to the usual taxis. COTAR previously announced a major protest against Uber in Bucharest last autumn, but it later decided to cancel it.

At the end of November, the taxi companies that have a contract with the Henri Coanda Airport near Bucharest announced their plan to stop their activity at the airport if a billboard that encourages travelers to use the Uber services would not be removed from there.

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Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com