The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal filed by Vector Ronda, a subsidiary of Cabify, which requested compensation of 237.5 million euros from the State for the approval in 2018 by the Government of a decree that transferred powers to the autonomous communities of VTC licenses in urban matters. The High Court thus endorses this regulation -known as the ‘Ábalos Decree’ because the socialist José Luis Ábalos was the head of the Ministry of Transport at that time- which in practice limited VTC authorizations to the interurban area, with a transitional period of 4 years that ended last year.
The company argued that this period did not compensate for “all the damages” caused by this regulation, mainly economic ones, as it had to stop providing the urban service if the autonomous communities decided so after those four years. Specifically, Vector Ronda filed an appeal to protect its 2,192 VTC licences, calculating a total damage of 237 million euros, a reason of 164,320 euros for each license in Madrid, 74,678 euros per license in Catalonia and 34,810 euros per license in Andalusia. , Valencia and Castile-La Mancha.
For its part, the State Attorney’s Office, according to the judgment consulted by Europa Press dated July 17, 2023, believes that the decree is “fully in line with the constitutional system of distribution of powers in the field of land transport”, according to which urban transport is, as a general rule, intra-community and, therefore, the exclusive competence of the autonomous communities.
In any case, some communities, such as Madrid, have legislated in favor of the continuity of VTC services, as highlighted in the ruling, so any calculated damage would also be limited. The judgment thus shares the arguments of the State Attorney’s Office, understanding that VTC authorizations “do not consolidate acquired rights”, therefore they do not generate consolidated or acquired economic rights.
“The new regulation does not deprive of any right”
“The new regulation does not deprive of any right or suppress any service or faculty of these authorizations, it is a change in the conditions of the authorization that, in the face of an unquestioned reality, is limited to circumscribing the national authorization to the content characteristic of state competence, leaving it to the autonomous communities to regulate this mode of transport when its scope is exclusively urban and, therefore, intra-community, as required by the constitutional design of this competence”, the sentence explains.
The Supreme Court also rules out that the decree involves discriminatory treatment of VTCs compared to taxis, concluding that it only adjusts the state authority to the state powers in the matter of transport, according to the territorial criteria of distribution of powers designed in the Constitution.
