Poland’s parliament has voted to slowly begin the process of
abolishing Sunday shopping to allow workers to spend more time with their
families.
The law has been passed by
the sejm — equivalent to the British House of Commons or the U.S. House of
Representatives — but must be approved by the Senate and the president,
both of which could veto the decision.
Although
the major change — which reverses decades of movement on turning Sunday from a
holy day of rest into an ordinary day of shopping and work — has been
criticised as putting jobs at risk, the government hopes it will improve
quality of life for ordinary Poles.
If the law passes, Poland will start by just allowing Sunday
shopping on the first and last Sunday of the month in 2018, reports the Catholic Herald. This will be followed by
a further reduction in 2019 when it will be permitted only on the last Sunday
of the month, followed by a near total ban in 2020. From this point, special
allowances will be granted for busy shopping periods — for instance in the
run-up to Christmas.
The
counter-revolution in how Poland will approach the working week, taking it back
to a system that would be more easily recognisable to Poland’s pre-Communist
ancestors, comes among a series of other changes by Law and Justice, a nation’s
conservative, nationalist, and Christian political party.
Recent
government policy, which has emphasised the role of Christianity in daily
life and rejected the forced redistribution of migrants and refugees around the
Europe by the EU, has brought Poland into conflict with the Brussels
establishment, who treat the acceptance of non-European mass migration as a
requirement for membership.
The head of Poland’s national security office spoke
out against mass migration in the wake of the Islamist attack in Barcelona
Islamist in August, remarking: “We are
convinced by the latest attacks that there is a natural base for terrorists
where a large number of poorly integrated Muslims live … I see a growing
number of Muslim refugees and a surge of terrorism.”
This followed similar
statements by Prime Minister Beata Szydło in 2016, when she said: “I see no possibility
that refugees will come to Poland.”
The EU has threatened to
punish Poland for their refusal to accept migrant quotas but the government
has hit back, saying any
punishment the EU could give out would be better than opening Poland’s borders.
