"Are Shop Workers Not People Too?" Germany Debates Scrapping Its Sunday Trading Ban — and Czechs Are Weighing In

Germany's Retail Federation and Chamber of Commerce and Industry have called on the government to lift the country's ban on Sunday shopping. In their view, the restriction — rooted in Christian tradition — does nothing but hurt sales.

In Germany, the Sunday trading ban is effectively enshrined in the constitution, with Sundays officially designated as days for "spiritual elevation." In 2009, the country's Constitutional Court upheld the ban, confirming that shops must stay closed for precisely this reason.

The topic struck a chord with Czech readers too, who face the same "is it open or not" dilemma before every public holiday. "Great, now maybe they'll scrap our mandatory shop closures on public holidays too," one reader commented.

The discussion quickly turned into a debate over who should actually get to decide when a shop opens. Some commenters insist it's purely a matter for business owners and their staff — not the state: "In that case, just shut everything down — museums, aquaparks, restaurants, castles too," one participant suggested.

Others recall the days when shops closed at noon or 1pm on Saturdays and didn't open at all on Sundays — and argue families had more time for each other back then. "Are shop workers not people too? They can work morning to night all week as it is," one reader fumed, adding that people used to spend weekends visiting friends and going for walks, rather than dragging their kids to shopping mall play areas.

There's also a theory that the ban actually benefits not shopkeepers but gas station owners: since many stations have small supermarkets attached, they end up pocketing all the Sunday revenue while regular shops stay shuttered. A similar pattern plays out in Czechia several times a year — on public holidays, when gas stations become the only place left to shop.

Some in the discussion call the whole ban hypocritical: online stores, after all, sell goods on Sundays without any trouble, so why should brick-and-mortar shops be barred from doing the same? One suggestion floated was to scrap the ban altogether and instead legally mandate higher pay for weekend shifts, leaving the decision of whether to open on Sundays up to individual business owners.

There were also concerns for small businesses: if Sunday trading is allowed only for big retail chains, smaller shops still won't be able to afford weekend staffing, and city pedestrian zones will empty out as life shifts entirely to large shopping centers.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz