{"id":369021,"date":"2025-08-24T05:31:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T05:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/369021\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T05:31:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T05:31:14","slug":"majority-in-germany-against-relaxing-sunday-opening-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/369021\/","title":{"rendered":"Majority in Germany against relaxing Sunday opening hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly 60 percent of people in Germany<\/a> are opposed to relaxing the country\u2019s strict policy on Sunday opening hours, according to a recent representative survey.<\/p>\n

59 percent oppose German shops opening on Sunday<\/p>\n

A survey of 2.006 people conducted by YouGov on behalf of the dpa<\/a> has found that 59 percent of people in Germany are opposed to allowing shops to open on Sundays more regularly.<\/p>\n

34 percent of respondents said that they would be in favour of allowing retailers to open more regularly on a Sunday. The remaining respondents were undecided or didn\u2019t give an opinion.<\/p>\n

German supermarkets<\/a>, as well as clothes shops, bookshops and pharmacies<\/a>, are all closed on Sundays. Sunday is a \u201cquiet day\u201d in Germany, and a law adopted in 1950 prohibits shops from opening so people can enjoy recreational activities and time with family and friends. Restaurants, cafes, bars, museums<\/a> and cinemas remain open.<\/p>\n

\u201cVerkaufsoffene Sontage\u201d (shopping Sundays) remain the exception but are becoming more common, especially in the lead up to Christmas. In 2024, there were just four shopping Sundays in Berlin<\/a>, but Mayor Kai Wegner<\/a> (CDU) has announced a plan to double the number of days<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the YouGov survey, 54 percent agreed that opening the shops more regularly on Sundays would not benefit the economy, and a quarter said they spend more money on Sundays than on a weekday.<\/p>\n

Unstaffed markets find loophole in Germany\u2019s retail law<\/p>\n

Of the 34 percent of survey respondents who said they were in favour of relaxing Germany\u2019s Sunday shopping rules, two-thirds said their motivation was being able to shop in a more flexible and spontaneous way. 42 percent said they have too little time to shop during the week and 37 percent said they would like to shop recreationally on Sundays.<\/p>\n

Recently, semi-automated shops have been spreading rapidly across Germany. According to a study by Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW), a new one is opening almost every day.<\/p>\n

Semi-automated shops tend to be small and sell basic amenities, similar to a petrol station. Although there is no one serving customers at the till, employees<\/a> must still be present to stock shelves.<\/p>\n

So far, four federal states, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern<\/a>, Hesse<\/a>, Saxony-Anhalt<\/a>, and Bavaria<\/a>, have relaxed their Sunday shopping laws so that semi-automated shops can open legally. Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg<\/a> also plans to make the change.<\/p>\n

Churches and trade unions are among the most prominent critics of the law change for semi-automated shops, and of opening shops on Sunday in general. A church coalition in Bavaria, Allianz f\u00fcr den freien Sonntag (Alliance for free Sundays), recently announced that it would challenge the federal state’s new, relaxed regulations for semi-automated shops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 60 percent of people in Germany are opposed to relaxing the country\u2019s strict policy on Sunday opening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,129157,1824,129155,129152,129151,129150,129153,129154,129156],"class_list":{"0":"post-369021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-german-shop","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-shops-closed-on-sunday-in-berlin","13":"tag-shops-open-on-sunday-in-berlin","14":"tag-shops-open-on-sunday-in-germany","15":"tag-sunday-opening-hours-germany","16":"tag-sunday-opening-hours-opinion-germany","17":"tag-support-for-shops-closed-on-sunday-germany","18":"tag-why-are-shops-closed-on-sunday-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115082106392946299","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}