COLLABORATIVE TOURISM ACTIVITIES 245 IV.3. The Different Legal Relationship Generated Between Users on these Platforms Having said this, it is necessary to consider the different legal relationship that arises in this area between the parties. While it is possible to continue to assert the triangular relationship between BlaBlaCar and users, understanding this term in the sense of participants in the community and not in a technical legal sense, as well as the relationship between driver and passenger, as an inter partes relationship between equals or C2C, the one generated between Uber and the one who demands the service is a bilateral relationship. Indeed, Uber is the company in charge of providing the service, for which it uses the services of the drivers with VTC license assigned to the platform. We are not going to analyse whether these are employed workers, as has been recognised by some courts in the European Union45, or economically self-employed workers, given that this question is unrelated to the purpose of the work. Consequently, the relations that are generated between Uber and its users, employing this term in its strict legal sense, being qualified as a transport company, are subject to the scope of the consumer relationship, so that the few rules that exist in the field of private law for the contract of transport of passengers and the general rules of consumption will be applicable to the contract that is generated between both. These would apply to the relationship between the company and the passenger, as well as to the relationship between the driver and the passenger, the latter being understood as an agent of the carrier in the broad sense. The reasons that can be given for making such a statement are based on the fact that Uber has a decisive influence on the driver: (i) the driver cannot carry out the transport without the telematic application of the platform; (ii) he must maintain certain criteria of conduct and a type of vehicle, also demanded by the platform; and (iii) because he may be expelled from the platform when he does not accept several trips, also imposed by the company. This consequently generates a situation of “submission of the drivers to the direction and coordination of the company which is not too far removed from the modern jurisprudential conception of dependence understood as the provision of services within the scope of business organisation and management”46. 45 Judgments of the London Employment Tribunal of 28 October 2016 (Aslam and Farrar v. Uber) and of the French Cour de Cassation of 4 March 2020, recognising the status of Uber’s workers as company drivers because of their permanent legal subordination. 46 OLEART ABOGADOS, “Las sentencias sobre Uber (A propósito de la STJUE de 10 de abril de 2018)”, Revista de Derecho vLex, no. 168, 2018, availabe in https://app.vlex.com/#vid/726243693.
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