Poland’s justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro has turned to the Supreme Court in an effort to prevent shops from evading a ban on Sunday trading by offering reading clubs, travel services or equipment rental to exploit exemptions in the law.
The trading ban, which was introduced in 2018 by the government after being advocated by the Solidarity trade union and Catholic church, obliges shops to close on all but seven Sundays a year. However, it included a number of exemptions allowing certain types of businesses to remain open.
That has led many shops to find creative ways to stay open on Sundays. One such loophole was to offer postal services, though that was closed last year.
Other retailers have offered reading clubs, sports equipment rental or tourist services to take advantage of exemptions in the law for “establishments operating in the field of culture, sports, education, tourism and leisure”. One store even famously declared itself to be a bus station.
Supermarkets have rebranded themselves as book clubs and, in one case, a bus station to evade Poland's Sunday trading ban.
The new tricks come after the government closed a loophole that had allowed stores to remain open by offering postal services https://t.co/JpHsXLLUx9
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) February 7, 2022
Many such firms have been taken to court for violating the trading ban. But a number of them have won those cases, with judges ruling that their claimed exemptions from the ban are valid.
Now, Ziobro – who as well as being justice minister is also public prosecutor general – has filed appeals to the Supreme Court against three firms who have won such cases in lower courts, reports retail industry news service Wiadomości Handlowe.
Two of them are chains of stores that began offering sports equipment for rental in their outlets. Another is a grocery store that created a reading club, tourist information point and travel agency on its premises.
A loophole that allowed large retail chains to evade Poland's Sunday trading ban by offering postal services will close in one week after the government moved to tighten the law https://t.co/Ls0pCrEDfB
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 24, 2022
Poland’s labour inspectorate feared that those firms winning their cases in court could lead other businesses to use the same tactics. It therefore asked Ziobro to use his right as prosecutor general to issue an appeal to the Supreme Court to set aside the previous rulings and require lower courts to consider the cases again.
“Courts misinterpreted the Act on Restricting Trade on Sundays” by allowing firms that “did not meet any of the exceptions provided for in the act” to employ staff on Sundays, Łukasz Łapczyński, spokesman for the National Prosecutor’s Office, told Wiadomości Handlowe.
In his submissions to the Supreme Court, Ziobro has argued that the law banning Sunday trading only allows a retail outlet to operate on Sundays if it is within a larger business exempted from the ban, and not vice versa. But lower courts have argued in their rulings that there is no such specification.
Sunday "is for family and prayer, not for spending time in the store", says Poland's labour minister, who wants to meet with retailers to remind them about complying with the ban on Sunday trading https://t.co/1pxpjexkNT
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 25, 2022
Main image credit: Adam Guz / KPRM (under public domain)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
