Opening hours should be a matter of free choice, according to a survey by the Business Alliance of Slovakia (PAS) in connection with a proposal by members of parliament to ban Sunday shopping. According to 85% of the businessmen, the state should not decide when shops can open. They see it as nonsense in a free enterprise system. In their view, opening times should be decided freely by the employers in agreement with their employees, who prefer to work during weekends, in return for overtime pay.
The opposite view is held by 13.5% of the businessmen. In their view, state regulation of shop opening times is justified because Sunday should belong to families and recreation. They argue that shop opening times are also limited in states such as Austria, Germany, Hungary and Poland, where similar measures were recently introduced. However, 96% of businessmen are united in the view that such measures should be discussed in advance with business representatives and experts.
The survey was carried out from August 30 to September 7 2022, with the participation of 156 businesses. 80% of them were corporations, and the other 20% were individual traders.
Source: TASR
