Market liberalization is an important objective of the European Union. It is a process of removing government restrictions and opening up markets for private companies. Road Transport Act which entered into force on 12 May 2018, enabled a completely free market for taxi services on the territory of the Republic of Croatia. Local self-government units, by this Law, are obliged to enable the provision of taxi services in their administrative area to all business entities that are eligible for taxi transportation. The paper will present a cross-section of the impact of liberalization on the taxi market in the cities of the European Union, as well as analyse specific features in the legal regulations of individual EU member states. The analysis will be made in order to better understand the new situation in the Republic of Croatia. The purpose of this paper is to determine the effects of liberalization of the taxi service market, and to what extent auto-taxi transportation contributes to the congestion of urban roads in Croatian cities. The aim of the paper is to analyse the structure of traffic flow, the share of taxi vehicles in traffic flow, and to draw guidelines and conclusions based on the analysis.

urban mobility; public transport; taxi service; liberalization