Romanian Senate Adopts Law Whereby Local Councils Set Max No Of Taxi Licenses

At the moment this number is four licenses per 1,000 people.

The draft law, signed by several democrat liberal deputies and senators, amends Law no. 68/2008, which approves Government Emergency Ordinance no. 153/2007, amending and completing Law no. 38/2003 regarding taxis, and has the aim of “improving taxi transport services and promoting competitive operators who are well organized from a material perspective and have the appropriate experience and equipment.”

This law initiative derives from EU Directive 2006/123/EC, which permits member states to impose certain requirements as regards service quality, if they are justified on grounds of public order, security, health or environment protection.

According to the law, article 1 paragraph 4 of Law no. 68/2008 shall read: “The maximum number of taxi licenses granted according to paragraph 2 and/or paragraph 3 shall be set through a decision of the local council, or of the general council of the City of Bucharest, respectively.”

The law’s reasoning note points out that, at the moment, 577 new requests for transport authorizations on behalf of natural persons and 304 requests on behalf of transport operators, which are currently queued by the local public transport service, cannot be resolved favorably.