The Monaco government has put out an olive branch to French taxi drivers, relaxing summertime quotas in an effort to stave off a protest which threatens to disrupt the Monaco Grand Prix.

With the busy summer season heating up and tourism making a comeback after two years of pandemic, the last thing the Prince’s government needed was taxi drivers threatening to wreak havoc on tourists and local passengers trying to come and go from Monaco.

A standoff between the local taxis and those coming from the neighbouring Alpes-Maritimes region nearly came to a head as Nice taxis declared their intention to block roads leading into the Principality from 26th to 29th May, coinciding with Grand Prix weekend. They went as far as to file for a strike notice at the Prefecture, finally pushing the Monaco authorities to compromise.

The government was incredibly reactive and issued an announcement on Tuesday giving French passenger transport drivers a 50% increase in their quota compared to 2021 for the high season from 1st May to 31st October with 180 stickers for VTC’s and up to 30 for taxis.

“The introduction of a limit of 100 rides per sticker, once considered, has been abandoned,” the Monaco government said in their announcement.

Meanwhile, some provisions currently in effect have been altered, such as the “easing of the constraint ‘to have three years of existence’ by adding the mention ‘including, possibly, in various successive societal forms’, for VTC’s only, the removal of the constraint ‘having acquired a vignette for at least two years’ for VTCs, and the removal of the constraint ‘to have, between 2014 and 2019, acquired at least one vignette’ for taxis.”

Other terms, such as morality obligations, are unchanged.

The new arrangements are to be published in the 20th May Journal de Monaco, but the government wanted to assure the French taxi drivers of the decision as soon as possible to give drivers the chance to jumpstart their applications to obtain the necessary stickers.

The rules concerning out-of-Monaco taxi and VTC drivers will be reviewed again in September to determine what measures will be applied for the winter season.

The Nice taxi union Nice taxi union and the Côte d’Azur VTC Committee have agreed to the terms and called off the strike action.

Photo by Krzysztof Jagodziński on Unsplash