ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Portugal and Spain regulated digital platforms in the passenger transport sector during 2018, tracing the politics, design, and effects of two landmark statutes. It undertakes a comparative case study of Portugal's Law 45/2018 and Spain's Royal Decree 13/2018. Drawing on media sources, parliamentary debates, official documentation, and semi-structured interviews, it reconstructs the bargaining among parties, platform firms, unions, and taxi associations. The analysis shows that Portugal prioritised market opening while introducing a modest floor of protections for drivers through licensing of platform operators, certification, limits on working time, and access to social security. Spain pursued containment by maintaining numerical caps, imposing territorial limits, and devolving licensing to the Autonomous Communities, with labour protection arising chiefly through the general labour code. The chapter interprets these divergent choices through a typology of inclusive and competitive solidarity, linking outcomes to governing social blocs, the choice of decision arenas (parliamentary lawmaking versus tripartite social concertation), and the European Union as a conditional external selector.
