InvestigationThe Californian company deployed considerable resources, between 2014 and 2016, to convince elected officials and state services to deregulate the activity of VTCs in its favor.
Much more than an Excel spreadsheet, it’s the battle plan of an American start-up set out to conquer France. This file, labeled “confidential”appears among thousands of documents obtained by the Guardian and forwarded to World and its partners as part of the international “Uber Files” survey. In July 2014, some 233 names appear in this table: ministers, advisers, parliamentarians, but also journalists, eminent representatives of circles of influence and consumer associations.
The leaders of Uber, with the help of the lobbying firm Fipra, outline a strategy to approach all those and all those who could support its cause. ” Function “, “relevance to Uber”, “contact summary”, ” next steps “ : each profile is the subject of a tailor-made approach. The company is committed to “work massively on the ecosystem of alliances (…) in parallel with the work of conviction carried out with ministerial cabinets and their administrations”, as detailed in an e-mail by an Uber lobbyist in France who declared, at the time of his hiring, to be “ready for battle” !
“Uber Files”, an international investigation
“Uber Files” is an investigation based on thousands of internal Uber documents sent by an anonymous source to the British daily The Guardianand forwarded to International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and 42 media partners, including The world.
Emails, presentations, meeting minutes… These 124,000 documents, dated from 2013 to 2017, offer a rare dive into the mysteries of a start-up which was then seeking to establish itself in cities around the world despite a regulatory context. unfavorable. They detail how Uber has used, in France as elsewhere, all the tricks of lobbying to try to change the law to its advantage.
The “Uber Files” also reveal how the Californian group, determined to impose itself by a fait accompli and, if necessary, by operating illegally, has implemented practices that voluntarily play with the limits of the law, or that may amount to judicial obstruction of the investigations of which he was the subject.
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Company founder Travis Kalanick publicly claimed this at the time: “We are in the middle of a political campaign and it turns out that the candidate is Uber. » In France, the The game is off to a bad start: the anger of taxis at the arrival of chauffeur-driven transport cars (VTC) has prompted the government to react. The socialist deputy of Saône-et-Loire Thomas Thévenoud, dispatched in February 2014 to clear the file, defends during the summer in Parliament a bill which threatens Uber twice. Not only does it aim to clearly ban UberPop, its private driver service, but it restricts the scope of action of UberX, operated by drivers with VTC status.
During the consultation, which lasted nearly three months, Uber did not speak “only once, at the first meeting, to tell me: ‘In any case, Mr. Deputy, you will do what you want, but if the law does not suit us, we will attack.’ And that’s what they did, at all levels! »remembers Mr. Thévenoud.
Uber is knocking on all doors to try to change “the perverse effects of the Thévenoud law” during its review
The Uber candidate is knocking on all doors to try to change “the perverse effects of the Thévenoud law” when it goes to the National Assembly. Several MPs tabled amendments drafted by the company, but these were rejected. The breach is found in the Senate thanks to the intervention of the elected representative of Seine-Saint-Denis Vincent Capo-Canellas, who brings together a majority on several measures favorable to Uber, in particular the rule of “return to the garage”. While the law requires VTCs to mark a stop between each customer, the centrist senator’s amendment sweetens it by allowing drivers to chain trips if they already have a new reservation.
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