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Emmanuel Macron would have helped the company Uber to settle and prosper in France, according to revelations from the international consortium of investigative journalists, based on internal documents from the VTC giant.
In 2014, Emmanuel Macron had just moved to Bercy, when a movement of anger broke out among taxi drivers. They protest against the competition deemed unfair from a new player in their market, Uber. The Californian start-up then wants to launch an Uber Pop, a carpooling service that allows everyone to improvise as a driver, for the time of a race. However, the device was made illegal on October 1, by the Thévenoud law.
A secret meeting is organized the same morning in the office of Emmanuel Macron, with the staff of Uber, including the CEO at the time. “In a word: spectacular. Unheard of. (…) Mega top meeting with Emmanuel Macron this morning. France loves us after all”, wrote after the meeting, in an email, Mark MacGann, lobbyist for Uber. Despite the benevolence of the minister, the Uber Pop application has however remained banned in France.
The company would then have offered an agreement to Emmanuel Macron, in exchange for abandoning Uber Pop: drastically relaxing the conditions for obtaining the license to become a driver, which President Hollande wishes to toughen. Response from Emmanuel Macron, by SMS? “Caz[eneuve] accepted the deal”. At the beginning of 2016, the duration of training to become a VTC driver fell from 250 hours to seven hours.
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