Uber Pulls Back German Operations Following Driver Court Ban

On-demand ride sharing platform Uber appears to be not well-received in Germany.

TechCrunch reports that the company was forced to pull back from scaling its operations in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Dusseldorf after a regional court banned Uber on using unlicensed drivers. The ban, which was handed down in March, will resort to a USD270,000 fine per violation. The ban stemmed from a challenge by Taxi Deutschland, a local taxi operator group who is up an arms with the company’s lower cost UberPop service.

On Friday, Reuters picked up Uber’s statement of its current operations in Germany, which read, “For many prospective Uber partners the process of registering an independent rental car enterprise has proved as too costly and time consuming.”

At the moment, Uber is currently operating in Berlin and Munich. Endgadget said the company also assured the public that it has plans to “intensify the dialogue” with lawmakers in the hopes of providing similar service to wider markets.