There has already been a lot of argument in the large community about the Sunday openings in the Parsdorf industrial park. It was about protecting the Sunday rest on the one hand, both for reasons of religion and occupational safety, and on the other hand protecting entrepreneurial freedom. In the end, when the municipal council had to decide on an approval, the latter usually won by not that much of a margin. This has now been decided for the current year – with a significantly larger majority than usual, and that is due to a situation that would actually accommodate the opponents of the Sunday opening.
Because the municipality can, as has always happened in the past, issue a so-called ordinance that allows shops to be opened on Sundays. The legislature, in turn, allows the municipalities to do this for a total of four Sundays a year, but has significantly tightened the requirements for this in recent years. In principle, and this has been the case for a long time, local retailers are only allowed to open if it happens in the context of a traditional market or festival. And it is precisely this environment that the legislature has continued to restrict. In the case of the Parsdorf market Sundays, this means that shops are no longer allowed to open in the entire town, not even in the entire commercial area, but only in the immediate vicinity of the fair that the local furniture store held for the first time in 2020, by two years later to be able to offer wall units, sofa landscapes and the like for sale with reference to tradition.
Unions and churches opposed it
This approach was criticized from the start, as was the approval that was then granted for opening the shop in 2002. Representatives of trade unions and churches regularly complained to the community that they were demanding that Sunday rest be observed. More recently, in addition to occupational safety and religious freedom, protection of the environment has also been used as an argument against the markets: the additional shopping day leads to additional car journeys and thus to more environmental pollution and more emissions of more climate-damaging carbon dioxide, so the argument goes.
Instead of all these arguments, Corona then ensured that there were fewer market Sundays including business openings – and Corona of all things now ensured a much broader approval than usual. Because, according to Greens parliamentary group leader David Göhler, nothing has changed in the skepticism about the shopping Sunday. He referred to the protection of public holidays and the environmental problem – but also announced that this time the ordinance would be approved. “We can see that these have been difficult years for the retail trade,” says Göhler, as well as for employees in the industry. These could earn surcharges by opening on Sundays, which is why the shops around the market should be allowed to open on four Sundays this year.
Without further discussion and with two dissenting votes from the SPD parliamentary group – Günter Lenz and Wolfgang Schermann – it was decided that market Sundays with shop openings may take place in Parsdorf on April 3rd, June 26th, September 25th and October 23rd. At least when it comes to the community. Because, as Florian Huhndt from the regulatory office explained, fairs are prohibited in the currently valid version of the Bavarian Infection Protection Act – and without a fair there is no shop opening either.