In March, taxi drivers shut down central Athens in protest of a new transportation bill working through the Greek parliament. Nikos Rompapas, president of KEFiM, the Greek Center for Liberal Studies, joined the ConsEUmer podcast to explain why a market that should have been settled years ago is still fighting over the basics.
The bill itself is not the real source of tension. It leaves most decisions to future ministerial rules, so both sides are simply guessing at the worst outcome for themselves. Taxi drivers fear full liberalization. Private hire operators fear even tighter restrictions. The result is a standoff that closed the center of Athens and left ordinary residents, and more than a few tourists, stranded.
Uber and FreeNow operate in Greece, but only by dispatching licensed taxis. True private hire vehicles are technically legal but regulated into near uselessness. On the mainland, a private hire booking must run at least three hours and cost a minimum of ninety euros, and the car has to start and end its trip at a fixed base. There is no version of that rule that lets someone book a quick ride across town. It exists solely to keep private hire vehicles out of everyday competition with taxis.
The absurdity becomes obvious during tourist season. Mykonos has about ten thousand residents in winter and over a hundred thousand visitors on a typical summer day, served by just thirty one taxis. Athens itself sees its population grow by roughly fifteen percent in summer, with visitors arriving from the airport and port needing rides far more often than locals do. Under those conditions, a fixed taxi supply simply cannot meet demand, and residents report being unable to find a cab during peak hours.
Rompapas frames this as a textbook public choice problem. A small, well organized taxi union has a lot to lose from reform and can threaten strikes, port closures, and even physical attacks on private hire vehicles. Tourists, who would benefit most from more competition, do not vote in Greek elections and have no political voice. The government, facing a loud and threatening minority and a diffuse, silent majority, has little incentive to act.
Even so, momentum may be building outside parliament. The Greek Competition Authority has issued an opinion stating plainly that protecting the taxi industry’s economic viability is not a legitimate reason to restrict competition, echoing a 2022 European Commission communication requiring that such restrictions be proportionate. Greece’s Council of State has also ruled against similar regulations in the past.
Rompapas explains why the old taxi monopoly made some sense originally. Passengers faced information asymmetry, unable to know a fair price or a driver’s reliability before getting in the car, particularly as tourists. Regulation solved that problem by fixing prices and licensing drivers. But ride sharing apps have solved the same problem more effectively, letting riders see prices and driver ratings upfront. The original justification for restricting private hire vehicles has largely disappeared.
KEFiM’s own reform proposal is deliberately modest, keeping a minimum fare for private hire vehicles slightly above taxi rates to ease the transition, rather than pushing for a fully free market. Even that has drawn furious opposition from taxi unions. Rompapas also floated a more radical fallback: if unions keep striking and attacking private vehicles during peak tourist season, the state should respond by opening the market completely, letting any citizen offer rides with their own car.
Rompapas expects the fight to move to the courts rather than parliament. But he is confident the market will eventually open, because the interests of passengers, not incumbent companies of any size, should ultimately decide how a city gets around.