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The rapid development of the collaborative (or sharing) economy has disruptive effects both on the economic and the legal landscape of the EU and its Member States. While national regulators and courts have adopted greatly divergent approaches, Uber Spain is the first occasion on which the ECJ discusses and qualifies the relationships developing in the two (or multi-) sided markets which characterise the collaborative economy. In so doing, the ECJ establishes the criteria which take the online platforms outside their mere intermediation function and into the provision of the underlying service. On this qualification rest the conditions under which online platforms should gain market access in the EU internal market; it may further have an impact on consumer protection and labour law. Because the criteria used by the Court are not all too clear and may not be applied in an all-encompassing manner and, further, run counter the approach followed, so far, by the Commission and by national authorities, fragmentation of the internal market emerges as a real risk. By refusing to acknowledge the disruptive effects of the collaborative economy, the Court implicitly but clearly calls in the EU legislature.
