Florence like Paris and Madrid, European capitals have already stopped renting electric scooters and Prague will also be added from next January. From April 1, 2026, the Tuscan capital will stop testing sharing services. After two consecutive expansions, Palazzo Vecchio has determined, through a city council resolution signed by mobility council member Andrea Giorgio, that there will be no more structured services. The motivation is twofold: security and decency, namely changes in laws at the national level and important issues in the management of profit sharing. The new Highway Regulations are very prescriptive, requiring drivers to wear a helmet regardless of age, as well as vehicle identification, insurance coverage and a ban on leaving the city center: The Municipality believes that this type of service makes it difficult to guarantee compliance with the regulations, despite checks by the municipal police. Therefore, it explained, “a situation of potential systematic violation of the highway code exists, which is unacceptable for urban and highway safety”.
Then there is a related «critical issue for abuse by users”, namely illegal parking and the use of scooters against traffic, on sidewalks, in areas prohibited for traffic or in lanes reserved for buses and taxis. Palazzo Vecchio has therefore decided to stop the scooter-sharing experiment that started in 2020: the service will stop on March 31, 2026, unless an appeal is forthcoming. To combat this, the Municipality will simultaneously strengthen the bike-sharing service – which recorded more than 1.5 million rentals per year in 2024 and growth of 18% in the first months of 2025 – by increasing the number of bicycles in circulation and updating the vehicles available, especially those using muscle pedaling power «As a government, we work a lot on the issue of road safety, which has always been our priority, and we use all the means at our disposal to guarantee it – said Mayor Funaro – After the national regulations and the impossibility of ensuring availability even in the face of city police inspections, they decided to stop sharing scooters responsible.”
For Florence, Giorgio added, “mobility sharing is the main option”: “Unfortunately, changes to the Highway Code, with the obligations imposed, make it difficult for operators to provide everything necessary to use the vehicle in accordance with the law, just as the use of scooters often does not comply with the code, both when moving and when parking”.
