Is it time Germany opened up its stores on Sundays?

By Arthur Sullivan | 15.04.2021

Many in Germany are familiar with the unseemly clamor to stock up on groceries before Sundays. That’s because here, Sunday is an explicitly noncommercial day. Economists are demanding a more flexible approach.

As you might expect for Europe's powerhouse economy, commerce is king in Germany. Except, that is, on Sundays, when the nation's stores are definitively shuttered.

Long before pandemic lockdowns forced closures every day, Sunday was already a sacred day of rest for German retailers and consumers. Over the years, many non-Germans have found that out to their surprise and disappointment.

It's all because of the Ladenschlussgesetz or "Shop Closing Law." A federal German law in place since 1956, it bans retail stores of all kinds from opening their doors on Sundays and public holidays, along with some other restrictions.

While individual states were given more leeway to make their own rules in 2006, Sunday shopping remains largely a no-go throughout the country. There are however a few designated Sunday shopping days each year and very limited exceptions for certain shops.

The power of the church

Calls for a loosening of the law crop up occasionally. But according to Gerrit Heinemann, professor for retail and trade at Niederrhein University for Applied Sciences, there are three reasons why he believes things will not change anytime soon: the resistance of the Catholic and Protestant Churches, the influence of trade unions and works councils and finally, the opposition of city parliaments.

Gerrit Heinemann believes the next decade will see people staying home more than ever, due to pandemic aftereffects

The two churches' influence as lobby groups is particularly strong he believes. "It is just a very important opinion when the church says no. Especially when the main political party has the word 'Christian' in its name," he told DW.

Beyond religious reasons, many associate Sundays as a time for family, and cultural opposition to Sunday opening is particularly strong. Michael Lind, the managing director of three Nahkauf (Rewe) supermarket franchises in Berlin, told DW that it was good for his employees to have their Sundays free.

"Sunday is still a day where you do a little something with the family," he says. "If you are now open every day, well, say the husband of a worker is a painter and he has Sundays off but his wife is a saleswoman and now she has to work on Sundays, then family life is disrupted."

But he agrees that were the law to allow Sunday opening, the culture would gradually adjust. Working in retail since 1997, he can remember how the Ladenschlussgesetz evolved to where it is today.

"When I started trading over 20 years ago, we closed at 3 p.m. on Saturdays," he said at his store on Kiehlufer in Berlin's Neukölln district.

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