Uber set for Danish return after seven years away

RIdesharing app Uber will return to Copenhagen in 2025 after the company agreed a deal with Danish taxi firm Drivr to operate the service in the Scandinavian country.

Published: 16 August 2024 10:39 CEST

Uber set for Danish return after seven years away

Uber branding in Warsaw, Poland. The company is set to return to Copenhagen in 2025 in a partnership with a Danish taxi company. Photo: Toby Melville/Reuters/Ritzau Scanpix

Under a new deal, Uber will provide the app while Drivr will be contracted to provide drivers and cars in keeping with the existing taxi laws.

“We have found the best of two worlds with a mobility giant providing a service no one else can and a local taxi company that follows Danish laws and knows the city and already has drivers on the street,” Drivr’s CEO Bo Svane told newswire Ritzau.

Uber withdrew from Denmark in 2017 after a new taxi law was passed requiring mandatory fare meters in cabs and seat occupancy detectors to activate the airbags.

The company said the following year that it was willing to return to the Danish market under a “different model”.

“In 2017 we were a company focused on confrontation and not cooperation. In 2024, we are a company that works together with several different partners all over the world,” the head of Uber in northern Europe, Maurits Schönfeld, said in a statement reported by Ritzau.

Essentially, the deal means that passengers will now be able to order Drivr taxis using the Uber app. The service will attract customers and benefit both companies, the two firms said.

“If you have a good experience as a customer with a good app, you need to have a good driver on the other side. If you have both you can really see the magic happen and the market increase,” Schönfeld said.

The Uber director said a similar model had been used by the company in other parts of Europe to great success.

“The problem-free experience is the same all over the world. Whether you’re in Cape Town or now Copenhagen, it’s the same solution and the same app,” he said.

One of the Uber app’s functions is the ability to see where your driver is and how far away they are. You can also share your journey with friends and family so they can follow your progress.

“At the same time, you know when you want a car that it will be there in five minutes,” Schönfeld said.

Drive’s Bo Svane said that that familiarity and ease of use of the Uber app would benefit the Danish company.

“We know that when it’s easier to use something, that’s what you’ll do,” he said, adding he hoped the service would attract both tourists and Copenhageners.

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Berlin would not take unilateral measures “that could harm the European Union”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said after Poland slammed the decision and the EU cautioned that border checks could only be introduced as an “exceptional” measure.

Faeser on Monday announced that border controls already in place with Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland would be extended to the borders with France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark for an initial six months.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned the move as “unacceptable” and said Warsaw would “reach out to other countries affected by Berlin’s decisions for urgent consultations”.

But Faeser’s ministry said the step complied with national and European law and reflect “coordinated action within Germany as well as within the EU”.

Her ministry added in a statement that “Germany continues to rely on close cooperation with its neighbouring countries, for example through joint patrols and joint police centres at the borders”.

A heated political row has flared within Germany about ways to limit the entry of irregular migrants at a time of rising public anger after several deadly attacks by suspected Islamist militants.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition has come under intense pressure to address the issue, which has fuelled the political rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD).

The conservative CDU opposition party and its Bavarian sister party have demanded far tougher steps and on Tuesday walked away from a high-profile crisis “summit” on the issue with the government.

“The government is incapable of action and leaderless,” charged Friedrich Merz, the CDU’s likely candidate against Scholz in elections a year from now.

The CDU has demanded Germany declare a national “emergency” to allow for across-the-board rejections of undocumented migrants at the border — a proposal the government has rejected.

Faeser instead presented a plan under which police could temporarily detain asylum seekers already registered in other EU member states, while authorities work to speedily send them back to that country.

EU police have access to the Eurodac database that captures fingerprints and other biometric data of irregular migrants and asylum seekers.

The interior ministry said that under its proposal, German police who stop asylum seekers at the border would check Eurodac and, if the person is identified, detain them while initiating steps to speedily deport them.

Police would quickly “check whether detention capacity is available” and apply to a court for detention or to assign them to a fixed residence to “prevent the persons from going into hiding”.