Alex Trelinski
TAXI drivers across Spain are staging a three-hour strike between 11am and 2pm on Wednesday in protest over spiralling insurance costs.
Driver associations like Elite and Antaxi have called on the government to intervene to stop the hike in premiums and to stop an alleged price fixing cartel among insurers.
Many drivers have seen huge rises since 2022 with insurance costs doubling with some seeing payments rising from €1,000 to over €4,000 within just three years.
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Rafael Baena, president of Elite Taxi Andalucia, said: “We don’t understand the commerical strategy of insurers which is totally unfounded and will see many drivers quit.”
“Insurers use a non-transparent and unjustified risk assessment, making the charges prohibitive and firm even force us to take out several policies simultaneously,” he added.
Taxi associations got smaller political parties last week to file a motion in Congress calling on the government to intervene.
The motion to be debated urges the government to ‘guarantee the taxi sector insurance policies with a competitive cost, adjusted and proportional to the coverage required for driver to work’.
The insurance employers’ association, Unespa, says that firms have lost money in recent years due to the higher repair costs for cars and the rise in the scale of damages established by the government.
“The total cost of the claims and the operating and administrative expenses exceed the income obtained by insurers from the premiums in this line of business,” Unespa said in a statement.
Pelayo which insures many taxi drivers, said: “Prices are totally adjusted to maintain the sustainability of the insurance and the cost depends on each taxi driver.”
Over price fixing, Pelayo stated that no agreements had been struck with other insurers.
