Former Dutch EU commissioner Neelie Kroes joins Uber board

Former Dutch European commissioner Neelie Kroes to join a new advisory board at  taxi company Uber.

Kroes, who is currently Amsterdam’s start-up ambassador, will have a major role in Uber’s new eight-strong public policy advisory board which will focus on regulatory issues and competition.

Uber, which operates in 43 countries has run in the problems with local laws in many of them. In particular, its budget Uberpop service has let to protests from existing taxi firms. The Uberpop service has been dropped in the Netherlands because of regulatory and competition issues.

Kroes, who is 74, was a minister of transport for the right-wing liberal VVD in the 1980s and spent 11 years at the European Commission, first in the competition job, then covering the digital agenda.

Supporter

She was furious in 2014 when a Brussels court banned Uber, saying on twitter: ‘We are not in the 19th century are we?’ and saying the decision was not about protecting passengers but about protecting a taxi cartel.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Kroes said: ‘Uber needs to communicate in a very different way . . . They have to take into account that there are still differences in culture,’ she said. ‘Don’t think that everybody is attacking you.’

Advisory board members will meet twice a year and be compensated with shares in Uber, which is valued at $62.5bn, the FT said.

Kroes is also joining the board at cloud computing giant Salesforce.