242 LEGAL IMPACTS OF COVID-19 IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY service of a vehicle with a driver for relatively short urban or interurban journeys. This service, far from the initials of UberPop, is provided today by a professional driver, who must own a VTC license, and who, on behalf of the platform, carries out this commercial activity for profit41. The identification of Uber as a business model specific to B2C (Business-toConsumer) relations is clear when we examine the relationship between the entity and the users of the service, applying the aforementioned Commission criteria, endorsed, in turn, by the arguments put forward by the ECJ in its judgments of 20 December 2017 (Case C-434/15, Elite Taxi Professional Association v. Uber Systems Spain, S.L.) and 10 April 2018 (Case C-320/16, Uber France)42. While both discussed the legal nature of this platform and the service they provide, this paper will be focused only on the former, for reasons of space. Thus, although the judge initially acknowledged that an intermediary service which consisted, at the time, of connecting a non-professional driver who used his own vehicle with a person who wishes to make an urban journey43, constituted a service different from the transport service, since the latter consists of the physical act of moving people or goods from one place to another, using a vehicle, and, as such, could in principle be described as “an information society service”. However, it continues to point out that the service at issue which Uber provided went beyond that since, at the same time, it created a range of urban transport services which is made accessible to persons wishing to make use of that range of services for urban travel, solely and exclusively through its app and whose general operation it organised. Furthermore, the Court found, applying the above-mentioned basic elements which allowed us to discriminate against a business activity underlying the mere intermediation in the provision of the 41 Study of the Asociación Española de la Economía Digital (adigital) y Sharing España: Los modelos colaborativos y bajo demanda en plataformas digitales, available in: https://www.adigital.org/media/plataformascolaborativas.pdf, p. 21. 42 Contrary to our opinion, authoritative doctrine has been expressed. Thus, according to VELASCO SAN PEDRO, L. A., “El transporte colaborativo Hic et Nunc”, Revista de Estudios Europeos, no. 70, 2017, p. 409, Uber has the condition of intermediary since he carries out a similar activity to that of travel agencies; BARNES, J., “Un falso dilema: Taxis vs. Uber”, Diario La Ley, no. 8942, 16 March 2017, electronic ed., pp. 3 et seq., said that the activity of this platform is clearly described as information brokerage; while OLMEDO PERALTA, E., “Liberalizar el transporte urbano de pasajeros para permitir la competencia más allá de Taxis y VTC: Una cuestión de Política de la competencia”, Revista de Estudios Europeos, no. 70, 2017, p. 267, begins by defending Uber’s status as an intermediary between the driver (carrier) and the passenger, he ends up recognising, however, that he would act at best as a contractual carrier. For DOMÉNECH PASCUAL, G., “La regulación de la economía colaborativa (“Uber contra el taxi”)”, op. cit., p. 100, the services provided by Uber are intermediation services. 43 Service Uber Pop".
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