Uber Might Soon Become Illegal in Bulgaria

New legislative changes have been adopted in the first round of voting in Bulgarian National Assembly. In case the second round of voting also turns out to be favorable, that would practically make the Uber business model illegal.

The texts have been proposed by center-right GERB MPs Tsvetomir Mihov and Ivan Valkov.

According to the current legislative norms, drivers without a taxi license are also allowed to drive passengers, as long as they have a license provided through a registered taxi company.

In this way, drivers are not fully responsible for the services they provide on the road. Therefore, despite the numerous registered violations of particular drivers, their licenses can not be revoked.

''I am going back to the topic of Uber,'' said socialist BSP party MP Georgi Kadiev. '' The argument from my colleague from GERB was that whenever there is a law violation and the license needs to be revoked, the company is making an excuse with the people who are merely operating under its license. However, the problem is that the law amendment would automatically would exclude Uber and similar companies out of the game. They would never agree to hire drivers in contract positions.''

A number of analysts have further stated their suspicions that the move had been proposed in response to the number of complaints by major taxi companies across the country.

''Big taxi companies have used their lobbies to limit their competition,'' said Vladimir Karolev, an assistant analysts to the Economy Minister, Bozhidar Lukarski, on his Facebook profile. ''Cudos to the winners!''