Asociación Élite Taxi is litigating against ride-hailing platform, Free Now over the platform’s use of opaque pricing algorithms in the regulated taxi sector.
Taxi fares in Barcelona are set by public tariff regulation as a consumer-protection guarantee. Élite Taxi argues that Free Now’s app applied algorithmically determined dynamic prices and charges to taxi services in breach of that framework, harming both passengers — who lose the protection of the regulated fare — and the drivers and traditional operators who compete while respecting it.
Algorithmic pricing and unfair competition by ride-hailing platforms
Organisation Name
Asociación Élite Taxi
Country/Jurisdiction
Spain
Grant Amount
EUR 25,038
Current Status
Ongoing
Image credit: Photo by Lexi Anderson on Unsplash
Grant type
Litigation Track Support
Description
Asociación Élite Taxi is litigating against ride-hailing platform, Free Now over the platform’s use of opaque pricing algorithms in the regulated taxi sector.
Taxi fares in Barcelona are set by public tariff regulation as a consumer-protection guarantee. Élite Taxi argues that Free Now’s app applied algorithmically determined dynamic prices and charges to taxi services in breach of that framework, harming both passengers — who lose the protection of the regulated fare — and the drivers and traditional operators who compete while respecting it. Because the pricing mechanism lives inside the platform’s software, the abuse is invisible from the outside; only the code itself can show how prices were formed.
Élite Taxi is pursuing legal action through the Spanish courts on two tracks, commercial and administrative proceedings:
- As of 2026, the commercial case was before the Provincial Court of Barcelona on appeal. A preliminary reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union is requested regarding the application of EU law to platform pricing in regulated transport markets.
- In the administrative proceedings, in 2025 the court took the rare step of ordering Free Now to disclose the source code of its pricing system as evidence. After the platform’s procedural challenges were dismissed, in 2026 the code was submitted to the court. Two former Free Now drivers have also been admitted as witnesses.
The source-code disclosure is significant because it demonstrates that algorithmic opacity is not a shield against judicial scrutiny, and provides a working precedent for evidence-gathering in platform-accountability litigation across Europe.
Asociación Élite Taxi is a Barcelona taxi drivers’ association of around 800 members. They previously brought litigation leading to the landmark 2017 ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union classifying Uber as a transport service (C-434/15, Asociación Profesional Élite Taxi v Uber Systems Spain).
"The source-code disclosure is significant well beyond this case: it demonstrates that algorithmic opacity is not a shield against judicial scrutiny, and provides a working precedent for evidence-gathering in platform-accountability litigation across Europe"
Strategic Goals
- To establish that platforms operating in regulated urban transport markets are fully bound by fare regulation and unfair-competition law.
- To secure judicial access to the algorithms through which platforms set prices, creating a replicable route to algorithmic transparency in litigation
- To protect the regulated taxi model, its workers and its users from displacement by unaccountable algorithmic pricing.