The Heraklion Taxi Owners Association has returned to the public arena with a message that is difficult to misinterpret: tourism does not suspend the law, and renaming a practice does not make it legal.
Following their recent strike and the activation of parliamentary scrutiny, the association issued a detailed statement denouncing what it describes as widespread illegality and regulatory abuse in passenger transport across Crete—much of it carefully wrapped in the language of tourism.
“Let us call things by their real name.”
At the heart of the association’s statement is a series of blunt, uncomfortable questions—questions directed not at the public, but at regulators and policymakers who are expected to know the difference between legal transport and creative storytelling.
The taxi owners ask:
- What do we call it when a private vehicle with a driver carries passengers from one destination to another with a rental price and duration below the legal minimum? Some call it “VIP transport.” The law calls it illegal appropriation of transport work.
- What do we call it when a hotel guest asks reception for a TAXI and an unlicensed private van shows up instead? Some call it “VIP transport.” The law calls it illegal appropriation, bribery, and an insult to the visitor.
- What do we call it when a private van is paid in advance, seconds before boarding, on the coastal road of the port? Some call it “VIP transport.” The law calls it illegal appropriation.
- What do we call it when a private vehicle presents a €10 invoice during a roadside tax inspection, while the law clearly sets the minimum rental at €90 or more? The law calls it unfair competition and fraud.
- What do we call it when Crete reaches a ratio of five private vehicles (including those arriving from other regions of Greece) for every one licensed taxi? Is this “healthy competition”—or traffic chaos and a systematic dismantling of public transport?
- What do we call it when a “virtual” travel agency sells a one-way transfer on its website—Heraklion Airport to Hersonissos—for €28, specifying a private vehicle by brand and type, and assigns a private car with driver to execute it? Sometimes, they say, a mini tourist bus might appear instead, regardless of what the customer booked—after the reservation has been rebranded as a “tourist package” to justify using a private vehicle. The association’s position is clear: renaming a transfer does not change its legal nature.
Tourism, legality, and selective blindness
The taxi owners stress that tourism is not under attack. What is under attack is the idea that tourism can be used as legal camouflage.
They reject the argument that one entity “sells” the service while another merely “executes” it—a distinction they describe as a deliberate trick to separate the financial transaction from the transport act itself.
Under Greek law, a private vehicle with a driver is rented exclusively, with a minimum price and minimum duration. Any attempt to bypass this framework is not innovation—it is a distortion of competition.
When inspections appear, illegality disappears
The association points to 2023, when the Pegasus passenger transport inspection unit briefly operated in Crete. During that short period, thousands of private vehicles allegedly vanished from airports, ports, and tourist hotspots—the question “why” is left hanging—intentionally.
What the taxi sector is demanding
Taxi owners insist they are not afraid of competition. They are fearful of unregulated competition.
They call for:
- A permanent, specialised inspection unit for passenger transport in Crete;
- Inspectors fully trained in transport law and its loopholes;
- Systematic controls applied to everyone, without exception.
Licensed taxis, they note, operate with meters, regulated prices, tax transparency, and public-service obligations 365 days a year—serving residents and visitors alike, not only during peak tourism months.
Tourism cannot thrive in grey zones
Crete’s tourism reputation rests on trust—trust in pricing, trust in services, trust that what is ordered is what arrives.
Grey zones do not protect tourism. They erode it. The taxi owners’ demands are not ideological. They are procedural. They ask for something profoundly unglamorous but essential: equal enforcement of the law.
If illegal practices disappear the moment inspectors arrive, the issue is not regulation—it is will. Tourism does not need protection from rules. It needs protection from their absence.
