Regulation

Several major European cities ground to a halt on Wednesday as licensed taxi drivers took to the streets in mass protests against the smartphone taxi app Uber. Demonstrations in London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Milan and Rome caused travel chaos and long tailbacks, as taxi drivers protested against the app, which they argue is unregulated and threatens their livelihood. In London, Trafalgar Square and Whitehall were jammed from the start of the planned "go slow" at 2pm, as thousands of black cabs gathered honking their horns, bringing total gridlock to the centre of the capital, while supporters waved banners and started occasionally chanting: "Boris, out!" A spokeswoman for Uber, the US start-up which links minicab drivers to passengers via a GPS-based smartphone app, said the protests had boosted new users in London by 850%, as people tried to cope with the gridlock. But the company, based in San Francisco and backed by Google and Goldman Sachs, came under increasing pressure to be more transparent about its tax set-up. Taxi associations claim Uber routes its payments through headquarters in the Netherlands to minimise its corporation tax payments in France, the UK and Germany – in a similar manner to Apple and Starbucks, which have found themselves in the firing line for the practice.