Facts:
- Licenses are granted by the government and in theory they could not be sold. There are some loopholes in the legislation that make this possible. No government has never tried to fix this. In fact, a license in a big city like Rome is normally sold at around 200k Euros.
- By acquiring a licence, a driver can easily make in big cities between 3-4k euros net (I know people who own taxi licenses). Average salary in Italy is around 1700 Euros/month. - Various time (2006, 2012) in the last years governments have tried to increase the number of licences and reform the market. The results was riots in all big cities, traffic paralized for weeks.
- 20000 licenses represents a lot of votes. At time of election, license-holders and their families represent a large amount of votes. In cities like Rome (6k licenses), they can change the results of an election.
All this to say that at the moment, this represent an un-reformable matter and I see no way a country like Italy can be open up to any type of modernization brought by technology. Uber is trying to work around the laws for their own benefit. But as an Italian (living abroad) I would be very happy to see how city transportation would change with the advent of new players.
Now it is true the judge is only applying the laws. But the matter here is rather if the negotiations between taxi drivers and government of last month should have produced some results like a reasonable reform of the market where I personally see there is room for more then one winner, including users.
Notice that Airbnb, who has also entered the market of house rentals, has found so far much less difficulties: no lobbies to fight against, real-estate generally benefitting from this type of business.