It’s been a rough seven days for shared micromobility in Europe. Within the span of a single week, two major capitals announced they would be pulling the plug on entire segments of their shared fleets, both effective January 1, 2027. Barcelona confirmed it will not renew the licenses of its seven private bike-sharing operators, while Brussels announced a full ban on shared e-scooters. Two different vehicle types, two different cities, two very different sets of reasons — but together, they paint a sobering picture of how fragile operator-city relationships can be when public tolerance runs out.

The Barcelona Case: Politics and Tourism

Barcelona’s mayor, Jaume Collboni, didn’t hold back when announcing the decision on Catalunya Ràdio: he called the private shared-bike system a “mess” and confirmed that none of the 3,500 licenses held by seven operators — Bird, Bolt, Cooltra, Donkey Republic, Lime, RideMovi and Voi — would be renewed when they expire at the end of 2026.

The justification leans heavily on enforcement data. According to municipal figures cited by road.cc, the city has issued over 5,400 fines to operators in just the first half of the year for improper parking — a number roughly equivalent to one and a half fines per bike. Complaints have piled up too, concentrated in tourist-heavy districts like Ciutat Vella, Eixample and Sant Martí.

But scratch the surface, and this is as much a political and ideological story as an operational one. Collboni explicitly framed the decision as a way to protect “local alternatives” such as bike rental shops, and — more tellingly — announced an expansion of Bicing, the city’s own public bike-share scheme, in the same breath. Crucially, only around 10% of private bike-share users are Barcelona residents – a number contested by some operators, as Cooltra mentions 40% – the rest are visitors. In a city that has spent years tightening the screws on overtourism — from cruise ship restrictions to short-term rental crackdowns — shared e-bikes used overwhelmingly by tourists make an easy political target.

Not everyone agrees with the framing. The president of the European Cyclists’ Federation criticized the move, arguing that removing private operators leaves Barcelona without “sufficient mobility supply” and contradicts its sustainable transport ambitions. The episode is essentially a public-versus-private turf battle, dressed up in the language of public order — and one where the public operator wins by default.

The Brussels Case: When “Safety for All” Meets “Criminal Purposes”

Brussels’ decision, announced just days later, reads very differently. The Brussels government confirmed that shared e-scooters will disappear entirely from January 1, 2027, when the contracts of current operators Bolt and Dott expire. No new licenses will be issued.

The headline justification is safety. Mobility Minister Elke Van den Brandt and Minister-President Boris Dilliès pointed to a sharp rise in accidents: 666 people were injured in scooter-related incidents in the Brussels-Capital Region in 2025, up more than 25% year-on-year, with 60% of serious injuries involving head trauma. Dilliès was blunt: anyone falling off a scooter is more likely to get hurt than someone falling off a bike, and badly parked scooters make pavements unusable for wheelchair users, parents with strollers, and the elderly.

The numbers reveal why operators and regulators are talking past each other. Brussels generated roughly 8.5 million shared scooter trips in 2025 — 59% of all scooter trips in Belgium, out of 14.5 million total shared bike and scooter trips in the region, up from 7.55 million trips in 2024. Against that, 666 injuries works out to roughly one per 12,800 trips. Per trip, scooters have arguably never been safer: across Europe, kilometres travelled rose 13.9% in 2025 while injuries per million kilometres fell 1.1%, continuing a 19.9% decline since 2021. But in absolute terms, more usage still means more injuries overall — and it’s that raw number, not the rate, that shapes political decisions. Brussels’ ban shows which argument wins.

But there’s a second, more startling reason buried in the announcement. Brussels public prosecutor Julien Moinil revealed that shared e-scooters were used in 25 shootings in the capital last year — a detail that has fed directly into the government’s framing of the ban as “additional support for judicial authorities and police services in their fight against crime.” It’s a rare instance of a micromobility policy decision being explicitly tied to organized crime and drug trafficking, rather than just parking chaos or injury statistics.

Notably, Brussels isn’t turning its back on shared mobility altogether. The Villo! bike-share scheme, currently operated by JCDecaux, has been extended to 2028 and will be relaunched with electric bikes across all neighborhoods — a clear signal of where the city’s priorities now lie.

One City-Specific Story, One Confirmed Trend

It would be a mistake to read these two announcements as evidence of a single, unified backlash against shared micromobility. Barcelona’s case is highly specific: it’s the latest move in a broader anti-overtourism strategy, where shared bikes used mainly by visitors have become collateral damage in a fight that’s really about public space, local identity, and strengthening the municipal Bicing brand against private competitors. Generalizing from Barcelona to “cities are turning against shared bikes” would be a stretch.

Brussels, on the other hand, fits squarely into a pattern we’ve seen across Europe for several years now. Following Paris, Madrid and Prague, Brussels becomes the latest major capital to phase out shared scooters while doubling down on shared e-bikes as the safer, more socially acceptable alternative. The direction of travel for the industry remains the same: scooters are increasingly viewed as a liability, while e-bikes are the format cities are willing to bet on for the next cycle of shared mobility contracts.