Athens (AFP) – Taxi drivers in Greece on Wednesday kicked off a two-day nationwide strike over new rules which they say excessively favour private vehicles for hire. “This is a battle for survival,” the Athens taxi drivers union SATA, who began the strike a day earlier, said in a statement.
“We apologise to passengers…for any inconvenience they may experience in the coming days, but our struggle is also a struggle on their behalf,” SATA said. “It is a fight to protect their right to have access to a public-service mode of transport (taxis), and not to private cartels,” the union said.
Until now, Greece had protected the sector by allowing platforms such as Uber to operate only with licensed taxis. Cabbies also want the government to postpone a requirement that all new taxis that enter the fleet from January 1 be electric. They are demanding a deadline of 2035 for the transition to electromobility, arguing that the measure is currently unworkable due to a significant lack of charging stations for electric vehicles.
Taxi drivers in the greater Athens area have threatened to launch an indefinite strike in the near future if their demands are not met. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, tourism has been breaking records in Greece: more than 40 million visitors in 2024, a performance that is expected to be surpassed again for 2025.
© 2024 AFP
