Snail operation in downtown Paris. Deploring being excluded from the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games and viscerally opposed to the increase in their numerus clausus, VTC drivers decided to bang their fists on the table this Thursday, in order to demonstrate their discontent. From 1 p.m., they planned to invade, not the ring road like last December 14, but the particularly busy Parisian hypercenter. Enough to symbolize their dissatisfaction at being excluded from the “Olympic lane” of the ring road, this left lane reserved for athletes, accredited figures and taxis during the 2024 Olympics, but from which VTCs will be excluded. An axis which must then remain as a legacy after the Games, as the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo hopes.
Choices that do not please the main organizations representing VTC drivers, who feel sidelined, and regret not participating in the discussions. “This reignites the animosity that there was between taxis and VTCs,” deplores Arnaud Desmit, the secretary general of the Association of VTCs of France (AVF) at the origin of this gathering. “From what we see, there is no question of letting VTCs participate in the event, we are not present either in the leaflets or in the advertisements, but I fail to see how they can do without from us during the Olympics,” he emphasizes, explaining that he had the feeling “of being left out of my home.”
In a press release published on we demand a fair numerus clausus”, “the end of the exclusion of VTCs from the Olympics” or even “support for the European directive for platform workers”. For several weeks, the INV has deplored “the unprecedented deterioration of their working conditions”.
“VTCs, crushed by insurmountable debts, find themselves trapped on several fronts, including exclusion from limited traffic zones and Olympic sites,” we could already read in mid-December. A situation exacerbated according to representatives of the profession “by the arrival of more than 60,000 new drivers, often part-time, and the proliferation of mafia networks fraudulently exploiting the profession of driver”.
Faced with this situation, they are calling in particular for “the dissolution of the ARPE (Authority for Social Relations of Employment Platforms)”, whose actions according to them favor “platforms to the detriment of workers”. They also wish to warn the general public of their wish to “intensify” their “punching actions on a national scale”, “determined to denounce our exclusion from the Olympics” which they describe as “Games of shame” as well as “the numerous scandals which taint them”.
