Inline Insights

This week's top 3 stories: Report highlights licensing problems for UK taxi and private hire drivers, VW and Intel working on autonomous ride-hailing in Israel, electric scooters to be legalised in Germany. 

Buried in the detail of a proposed Regulation from the European Commission was the establishment of an Observatory of the online platform economy. It has now been established and has a broad remit but little power, so far. Is this the foundation of a new EU regulator for online platforms?

Electric scooters are the latest addition to transport options in cities. They are user-friendly, green and increasingly popular with consumers, but in some cities they are causing headaches for policymakers.

As the number of self-employed people continues to rise in the UK, the need to provide support to this growing workforce is becoming increasingly important. But how can access to benefits and protections be improved, without relying on the incumbent employment relationships through which these are traditionally delivered? Emergent WorkerTech technology and applications may be part of the solution.

MEPs ask thousands of questions to the European Commission each year and during the 2009-2014 term of the European Parliament, over 10,000 questions were tabled. At Inline, our job is to cut through the noise, so here are the five most important questions for the tech sector in 2018.

Governments all over Europe are crafting policies and regulations that will lead to electric vehicles almost entirely replacing diesel and petrol cars within thirty years. In the UK, national policies are focused on creating the infrastructure for the electric vehicle revolution, but other policy initiatives and conflicting local priorities could impede the wider public policy goal.