A Driving School Hits a Wall of Regulations
The new york time
ENTREPRENEURS Benjamin Gaignault, left, and Alexandre Chartier founded Ornikar as an online alternative to other driving schools. Credit Johann Rousselot for
By SUZANNE DALEY
Experts say the struggle of two entrepreneurs highlights how the myriad rules governing driving schools stifle competition and inflate prices in France.
PARIS — Alexandre Chartier and Benjamin Gaignault work off Apple computers and have no intention of ever using the DVD player tucked in the corner of their airy office. But French regulations demand that all driving schools have one, so they got one.
Mr. Chartier, 28, and his partner, Mr. Gaignault, 25, are trying to break into the driving school business here, using computer technology to match teachers and students across France and to offer cut rates.
But they are not having an easy time. The other driving schools have sued them, saying their innovations break the rules. Their application for an operator’s license for their school, Ornikar, has been met with total silence at the prefecture.
“It seems like the idea is to wait us out until we run out of money,” Mr. Gaignault said recently. “There is an effort to just destroy us.”
Partly because they are young business school graduates and partly because getting a driver’s license here is so difficult and expensive that it has inspired books on the subject, Mr. Chartier and Mr. Gaignault have become minor celebrities. Various experts say their struggle highlights how the myriad rules governing driving schools — and 36 other highly regulated professions — stifle competition and inflate prices in France.
The new york time
ENTREPRENEURS Benjamin Gaignault, left, and Alexandre Chartier founded Ornikar as an online alternative to other driving schools. Credit Johann Rousselot for
By SUZANNE DALEY
Experts say the struggle of two entrepreneurs highlights how the myriad rules governing driving schools stifle competition and inflate prices in France.
PARIS — Alexandre Chartier and Benjamin Gaignault work off Apple computers and have no intention of ever using the DVD player tucked in the corner of their airy office. But French regulations demand that all driving schools have one, so they got one.
Mr. Chartier, 28, and his partner, Mr. Gaignault, 25, are trying to break into the driving school business here, using computer technology to match teachers and students across France and to offer cut rates.
But they are not having an easy time. The other driving schools have sued them, saying their innovations break the rules. Their application for an operator’s license for their school, Ornikar, has been met with total silence at the prefecture.
“It seems like the idea is to wait us out until we run out of money,” Mr. Gaignault said recently. “There is an effort to just destroy us.”
Partly because they are young business school graduates and partly because getting a driver’s license here is so difficult and expensive that it has inspired books on the subject, Mr. Chartier and Mr. Gaignault have become minor celebrities. Various experts say their struggle highlights how the myriad rules governing driving schools — and 36 other highly regulated professions — stifle competition and inflate prices in France.
Philippe Colombani, the head of a union of driving school owners, opposes Ornikar’s model and has challenged it in court. Credit Kosuke Okahara for
The rules set up barriers to newcomers, sometimes indirectly. Lowering them has become a critical test of France’s willingness to confront its declining competitiveness and the drain of its young people to London and other more flexible places from a country where protecting entrenched interests has always ranked higher, politically and culturally, than innovation.
Now, however, with France’s economy faltering and the Socialist government desperate to do something to revive its popularity, some experts expect that President François Hollande’s administration may finally take steps to tear down the tangle of rules that keep competition — and many young people — out of so many sectors of the economy.
Continue reading the main story
But there has been scant progress so far. In the case of driving schools, the government offers only a limited number of exams each year, and these are doled out to the driving schools depending on their success rate the year before. That fact alone gives the old guard a virtual monopoly, according to Gaspard Koenig, who wrote a book on his own (failed) efforts to get a driver’s license here, despite having graduated from one of France’s most elite universities.
“The system is absurd,” said Mr. Koenig, who was a speechwriter for Christine Lagarde when she was the French finance minister. “You are begging to get into the classes. You are getting shouted at by these teachers. It is humiliating.” Mr. Koenig finally got his license in London.
Since then, he has been campaigning for changes, including calling for an overhaul of the written test, which he says goes far beyond making sure that a person knows the rules of the road. Instead, he said, it seems intended to trip students up.
Now, however, with France’s economy faltering and the Socialist government desperate to do something to revive its popularity, some experts expect that President François Hollande’s administration may finally take steps to tear down the tangle of rules that keep competition — and many young people — out of so many sectors of the economy.
Continue reading the main story
But there has been scant progress so far. In the case of driving schools, the government offers only a limited number of exams each year, and these are doled out to the driving schools depending on their success rate the year before. That fact alone gives the old guard a virtual monopoly, according to Gaspard Koenig, who wrote a book on his own (failed) efforts to get a driver’s license here, despite having graduated from one of France’s most elite universities.
“The system is absurd,” said Mr. Koenig, who was a speechwriter for Christine Lagarde when she was the French finance minister. “You are begging to get into the classes. You are getting shouted at by these teachers. It is humiliating.” Mr. Koenig finally got his license in London.
Since then, he has been campaigning for changes, including calling for an overhaul of the written test, which he says goes far beyond making sure that a person knows the rules of the road. Instead, he said, it seems intended to trip students up.
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