Many people in Germany do not want retail stores to be allowed to open more often on Sundays.
This is the result of a representative survey by the opinion research institute YouGov, which was published on Friday. 53 percent of those surveyed completely or rather reject any easing. 37 percent would support this. 10 percent did not provide any information.
Men are slightly more likely to want shops to be open on Sundays (42 percent) than women (34 percent). People aged 55 and older are against it more than average (62 percent). This is less common for participants between the ages of 18 and 34. According to YouGov, 40 percent of this age group reject it if shops were to be open more often on Sundays than on the opening days set by the respective federal state. 3375 people took part in the survey.
There is currently a debate about shop opening times in Hesse. This was preceded by a legal defeat for the Tegut supermarket chain. At the beginning of January, the Hessian Administrative Court ruled that the closure of the “Tegut Teo” sales outlets, which were operated without staff, on Sundays by the city of Fulda was legal. Accordingly, the shops are sales outlets within the meaning of the Hessian Shop Opening Act. The branches should therefore remain closed on Sundays in the future. The YouGov survey only asked about opening times in general and not about shops without staff.
In a Funke interview, the head of the Ceconomy subsidiary MediaMarktSaturn, Karsten Wildberger, spoke out in favor of allowing German retailers to have regular Sunday openings, citing customer requests. You should at least try this out.
The regulations for Sunday opening are set out in the Shop Closing Act and vary in the federal states. Shops generally have to remain closed on Sundays and public holidays. There is a maximum number of Sundays open for shopping. In North Rhine-Westphalia there are a maximum of eight per year, in Baden-Württemberg three, in most other federal states four. (dpa)