MPs Seek to Bring Back Taxi Regulation in Czechia — Architects of Liberalization Sound the Alarm

A bill has been submitted to the Czech Parliament that could effectively undo the taxi market liberalization carried out a decade ago. The initiative's authors — MPs Patrik Nacher and Robert Kraliček (ANO movement) — propose granting municipalities the right to set their own requirements for taxi drivers, including mandatory knowledge of Czech and of the city's layout.

Under the proposed amendment, cities would be able to require, by local decree, that taxi drivers pass an exam on local geography and traffic law, with the certificate issued by the municipal administration itself — which would also set the exam's content. The amendment is being introduced into the Road Traffic Act, although it formally concerns taxi regulation under the Road Transport Act.

How things were before the app era

The authors of the critical op-ed are former reform architects who worked on liberalizing the taxi industry back in 2016, under Bohuslav Sobotka's government. According to them, it was precisely then that order was finally brought to Prague's taxi market, which for decades had been notorious for ripping off tourists.

Back in 1999, the Los Angeles Times warned readers that almost no Prague guidebook was complete without a warning about crooked taxi drivers. Frommer's wrote in 2004 that many drivers shamelessly overcharged passengers, with triple the normal fare being far from unusual. Lonely Planet in 2007 called the taxi rank outside Prague's Main Railway Station one of the most notorious spots for scamming customers, while American travel writer Rick Steves bluntly described Prague's taxi drivers as "a gang of crooks."

The arrival of services like Uber, Bolt and Liftago, the op-ed's authors argue, changed the picture dramatically: today the risk of being ripped off is virtually eliminated, since the fare is known in advance and passengers have a simple way to file a complaint.

What the new regulation threatens

Critics of the amendment point out that requiring knowledge of local geography is pointless in the age of GPS navigation, while the Czech-language requirement can easily be handled through an in-app translator powered by modern AI — especially since, according to the services' own statistics, most passengers actually prefer to ride in silence anyway.

The main problem, according to the authors, is that the decision would be left entirely up to municipalities. This could mean that Prague drivers would be unable to work in other towns even during major events, when demand for taxis spikes, while a driver from a suburb would be barred from freely picking up passengers within Prague itself.

The result, the authors warn, would be a decline in service quality and rising prices — Prague residents today are used to a taxi arriving within minutes and costing three times less than it did in the unregulated era. New barriers would discourage new drivers from entering the market, increasing both waiting times and fares for passengers.

The authors also point out that Czechia already has around 360 regulated professions — the second-highest number in the EU, a fact for which the country is regularly criticized by the European Commission. In their view, the new taxi regulation runs counter to the EU's push to remove barriers within the single market and could well trigger a case before the European Court of Justice — one Czechia would almost certainly lose. Starting August 1 next year, Prague is already introducing a requirement that taxi fleets meet at least the Euro 6d emissions standard, which, the authors argue, already addresses the issue of vehicle quality on its own.

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Source: seznamzpravy.cz