http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4c19a666-267f-11e6-8ba3-cdd781d02d89.html#axzz4AA6KOOku

Brussels is to call on EU governments not to ban or limit services such as Uber and Airbnb, in a bid to head off a regulatory onslaught from national authorities on the “sharing economy” in Europe.

The European Commission will this week set out guidelines to harmonise the often wildly different treatment faced by businesses trying to shake up sectors ranging from accommodation to transport across the 28-country bloc.

While businesses such as ride hailing company Uber have been welcomed by countries including the UK, their executives have been threatened with stiff fines or even jail in places such as France.

Coherent regulation on an EU-wide basis would provide a huge boost to these businesses, negating the need for companies to have fights with 28 different regulators.

Bans on services should be a “measure of last resort” for governments, according to draft guidelines seen by the Financial Times to be published on Thursday.

The move to help new entrants will ease some of the tension over technology regulation between Brussels and Washington, where Europe’s efforts to rein in the market power of the likes of Google and Apple have caused friction. Last year, US President Barack Obama accused the EU of regulation that was “designed to carve out some of their commercial interests”.

But while the bulk of the new guidelines will be welcomed by the predominantly US groups that dominate the so-called sharing economy sector, some will cause concern in Silicon Valley. The commission suggests that companies that do not allow their operators to set their own prices or that force them to take customers could be considered an “employment relationship”.

The commission move comes after services such as Uber faced partial prohibition in countries across the EU, including Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany.Any such definition would be resisted by Uber, which has vociferously argued that its drivers are not employees, meaning that the company does not have to do things such as contribute to social insurance schemes on their behalf.

Brussels also criticised moves such as Berlin’s attempt to crack down on Airbnb hosts by introducing fines of up to €100,000 for people who rent out their entire apartments on the home-letting website.

The commission said such rules were “generally difficult to justify”. Instead, countries should consider measures such as introducing limits on the number of days someone can rent out an apartment on websites such as Airbnb.

The commission also came out in defence of rating systems used by the likes of Uber, arguing that being able to rate a driver can lead to safer services. Critics of this system have argued that relying on reviews to judge drivers was potentially unsafe.

The guidelines are intended to encourage EU countries to look again at their regulation of sharing-economy businesses. Companies such as Uber have already complained to Brussels — which has the task of ensuring EU treaties are enforced — about their treatment in various countries. Results of these investigations are expected in a few months.

In general, the commission has given sharing economy businesses a more sympathetic hearing. Elzbieta Bienkowska, the commissioner for industry and the internal market, last year compared critics of Uber with those who had railed against the introduction of printing presses in medieval times.

Both Paris and Berlin have been keen on keeping a far stricter eye on new entrants, arguing that national regulations should not be diluted for their sake.

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