Following my presentation yesterday at a European Commission event about services in the EU Single Market (blog entry here, slides here), I was told by a representative of Leaseurope that Hertz charging someone using hertz.be €20.06 more for 4 days of precisely the same car hire in Brussels than someone […]
Latest Posts
Revisiting car hire price discrimination – 1 step forward (Europcar), 2 steps back (Hertz, Avis)
Back in July 2014 I discovered some price discrimination in prices for car hire, when hiring a car for a Belgium-Germany trip. The details of that discrimination can be found here, and the largest difference was €5.47. Little did I know that the European Commission was looking at the very […]
A rail postcard from Mannheim
Dear Violeta, Since my postcard from Forst (Lausitz) in December I’ve travelled the length and breadth of Germany by rail (even stopping off to hear you speak at the Schwarkopf Stiftung in Berlin), and today I am sending you a virtual postcard from Mannheim. I have no idea whether Franz […]
My attention-seeking Blaze bicycle light
As a person I seldom stand out, at least to look at – I am of medium height and medium build, my hair is plain and I choose my clothes precisely so as no-one remarks about them. If you passed me in the street your head would not turn, and […]
The extraordinary ease of DriveNow, GPS-based car sharing
“Why would I need a Mini or a BMW for car share?” I wondered when I first saw DriveNow cars on the streets of Berlin when moving here 15 months ago. A bit of searching online led me to discover that DriveNow (like its competitor Car2Go) is a car share […]
Bundestag hearing on long distance rail, night trains, Autozug
On Wednesday 14th January at 1100, 3 members of the Bundestag from Die Linke – Sabine Leidig, Herbert Behrens and Caren Lay – are organising a public hearing about long distance rail in Europe. The title of this is “Rückzug der Deutschen Bahn AG bei Nacht- und Autoreisezügen stoppen – […]