Is the Polish trend towards banning Sunday trading coming to the Czech Republic? For the moment, it doesn’t appear likely, but there are groups that hoping to force the topic back on the agenda. A cooperative of 900 shops (Družstvo CBA CZ) whose annual turnover is around CZK 2bn is hoping for a general ban on Sunday openings. The cooperative complains that small shops in villages across the country are dying out, in part because they’re forced to lose money by staying open on Sundays. It’s uneconomical for them to remain open, but they’re afraid to lose more business to the bigger supermarkets. Sunday shopping, they insist, will prove fatal.
Aktualne.cz points out that eight countries in Europe (including Germany and Austria) force stores to close on the seventh day (with certain exceptions, like bakeries and newsstands, gas stations and stores in public transportation hubs).
But there doesn’t appear to be much support at this point for a Sunday ban. Even the country’s largest shop workers union OSPO says its members aren’t agitating for it, while the Czech Chamber of Commerce claims that such laws go against the freedom of people to conduct business as they see fit.
The chamber’s spokesman Miroslav Diro says that if anything, the trend in Europe is moving the opposite direction (with the exception of Poland). “A gradual deregulation is underway in Germany and Austria,” he claims. “There’s also an intense debate about the lifting of trading bans in France.”
