Paris taxis keep airport monopoly

MPs have backed down on plans to open up the taxi ranks at France's busiest airport to competition.

The proposed change at Charles de Gaulle airport has been deleted from the Grenelle 2 law going through parliament at the moment.

Although the airport is based in the Val d'Oise, local taxi firms from that department are only allowed to drive people to the airport - not pick them up.

This is because of a 30-year-old deal between Aéroports de Paris and the city hall, giving Paris taxis the monopoly on airport pick-ups. A similar monopoly at Orly airport has already been scrapped.

Paris taxi drivers reacted with anger at the proposed changes earlier this year, staging three blockades and go-slow protests that disrupted traffic around the airport and on the main route into Paris.

Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said there were already too many taxis queuing at the airport and scrapping the monopoly would not have benefited customers.

Independent taxi drivers' union FNTI said it was taking legal action at a local level, at the tribunal administratif in Pontoise, to challenge the monopoly.

Union president Marc Ghis told Le Parisien that the group would take its fight as far as the European court if necessary.

Michael Stumpf - Fotolia.com