AdC wants equal rules for taxis and TVDE at airports – Transport

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The Competition Authority (AdC) put forward a set of recommendations to the Government and ANA regarding the conditions for picking up and dropping off passengers at Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports.

The Competition Authority put forward a set of recommendations to the Government and ANA to promote equal rules for the pick-up and drop-off of passengers at Lisbon, Porto and Faro airports.

“The AdC aims, with its recommendation, to promote an equitable and consumer-friendly competitive environment in the transport sector, encouraging the adoption of measures that guarantee equal conditions between different operators, namely Transport in Vehicles Uncharacterized from the Platform (TVDE) and taxis”, reads the statement sent to the newsrooms.

The regulator details that it identified that, when treated as private vehicles (which do not carry out an economic activity), TVDE service providers are subject to payments for picking up and dropping off passengers, after exceeding a certain number of free daily accesses. “These payments are not applicable to other competing operators, namely taxis, raising questions of equity”, he highlights.

Furthermore, the AdC concluded that TVDEs – such as the Uber and Bolt platforms – are placed at a competitive disadvantage in access to the terminal, as they are the only type of operator without direct access to the terminal doors.

In this sense, “with a view to promoting competition in the market, for the benefit of consumers”, the AdC prepared a set of recommendations addressed to the Government and the concessionaire ANA, aiming to minimize the distortions identified at national airports.

The first recommendation is addressed to the State. As the grantor of the Airport Public Service concession contract at Airports, it suggests that it must “ensure that the management of parking, by the concessionaire, in the airport area at airports located in Mainland Portugal does not result in discriminatory conditions, which are unjustified, from the point of view of its adequacy, necessity and proportionality, for the purposes of passenger transport service providers, in casu, taxis and TVDE”.

ANA recommends that it review “the conditions for picking up and dropping off passengers by TVDE service providers at airports, namely tariff and access conditions. In particular, priority should be given to neutral tariff conditions, which are not specific to a certain service provider(s), in order to minimize the distortions of competition identified between two types of similar services (TVDE and taxis)”.