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Uber documents: Massive data leak reveals how Macron secretly favored the company

2022-07-11 09:26:26Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Uber documents: Massive data leak reveals how Macron secretly favored the

Paris was Uber's starting point in Europe and met with fierce resistance from the taxi industry, culminating in violent street protests. In August 2014, an ambitious former banker named Emmanuel Macron had just been appointed economy minister, according to the BBC.

He saw Uber as a source of growth and badly needed new jobs and was eager to help. That October, he held a meeting with Kalanick and other executives and lobbyists that marked the beginning of a long but little-publicized tenure as a champion of the firm's controversial interests within government.

Uber lobbyist Mark MacGann described the meeting as “spectacular. Emmanuel and Travis met at least four times, according to the filings, in Paris and at the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland.

Previously, only the Davos meeting was reported. At one point Uber wrote to Macron saying it was "extremely grateful."

French taxi drivers were particularly outraged by the launch of UberPop in 2014 – a service that allowed unlicensed drivers to offer rides, at much lower prices. The courts and parliament stopped it, but Uber continued to operate despite the opposition.

Macron didn't think there was a future for UberPop, but he agreed to work with the company to rewrite France's laws governing its other services. On June 25, 2015, the protests turned violent, and a week later, Macron texted Kalanick with an offer.

On the same day, Uber announced the suspension of UberPop in France. Months later, Macron signed a decree easing licensing requirements for Uber drivers. The deepening relationship of the now-president of France with the controversial global firm that was in violation of French law has not been revealed until now.

Uber said that "UberPop's suspension was in no way followed by more favorable regulations" and a new law that came into force in 2018 resulted in France adopting "stricter rules" that were "in no way helpful for Uber".

The files also reveal how Uber's relationship with one of Europe's most senior officials, European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes, began much earlier and was deeper than previously known, thus breaking the law.

According to the filings, she was in talks to join Uber's advisory board before leaving her last European post in November 2014. As commissioner, Kroes oversaw digital policy and played a leading role in hitting Microsoft and Intel with massive fines.

But of all the companies she could have worked for after leaving, Uber was a particularly controversial choice. Uber executives were arrested in October 2014, and that December a judge in The Hague banned UberPop, threatening fines of up to 100,000 euros.

In March 2015, Uber's office in Amsterdam was raided by the Dutch police. The emails say Kroes called ministers and other members of the government to persuade them to stand down during the raid, reports abcnews.al.

She wrote to the commission's Ad Hoc Ethics Committee asking for permission to join Uber's advisory board before the 18 months were up and appealed to commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. That permission was denied, but documents show Kroes continued to help the company informally until her appointment was announced.

This underlines that Kroes had clearly broken the rules, said Alberto Alemanno, Jean Monnet professor of European Union law at HEC Paris. Looking at all the revelations about Kroes' relationship with Uber, he said: "It makes me feel that our system is probably not fit for purpose because this situation should have been prevented."

Kroes has in turn denied allegations that she had a "formal or informal role in Uber" before May 2016. She said that as an EU commissioner she interacted with numerous technology companies, always driven by the public interest.

During that period, the Dutch government appointed its own special envoy for start-ups, which involved interactions with a "wide range of businesses, governments and non-governmental entities" with the aim of promoting a "business-friendly and welcoming ecosystem in the Netherlands". , she said.

A spokesperson for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs says that "Uber was not considered a start-up in 2015". According to Uber, Kroes left the advisory board in 2018 and says it has since introduced new guidelines "strengthening oversight" of "lobbying and external engagements with policymakers" in Europe.

If the police wanted to intervene, Uber had a second line of defense, which made it impossible for law enforcement to access the company's computers. This would limit officers' access to sensitive company data, such as driver lists, which the company believed would hurt its growth.

A spokesman for Kalanick said he never authorized any actions or programs that would obstruct justice in any country and any accusations he made are completely false. He said that Uber "used tools that protect the intellectual property and privacy of their customers" and that "these secure protocols do not delete any data or information and have been approved by Uber's legal and regulatory departments."

The Uber Files is a leak of 124,000 records, including emails and texts that expose conversations and meetings between Uber executives and public officials as the tech-driven taxi firm sought to expand its business.

The files were leaked to the Guardian, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington DC and media partners in 29 countries, including the BBC's Panorama.


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