Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) has announced a plan to double the annual number of Sundays when shops in the city can open their doors.

Shops in Berlin may be allowed to open on eight Sundays per year

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner has announced a plan to increase the number of Sundays per year when supermarkets and retail shops are permitted to open, also known as Verkaufsoffener Sonntag.

Currently, supermarkets, clothes and furniture shops can only open their doors on four Sundays per year. Wegner would like to increase this number to eight times per year.

“We have to make sure that they are legally permitted eight opening days in Berlin,” Wegner said at an event on October 14, citing keeping tourists happy as a central motivation. “People come to Berlin and are surprised that KaDeWe is closed.”

This isn’t the first time Berlin has toyed with more Sunday openings. In 2006, the local government permitted retailers to open on up to 10 Sundays per year, but a complaint made by Germany's Catholic and Protestant Churches to the Constitutional Court in Baden-Württemberg meant the capital had to yield to the “day of rest”. The court ruled that Verkaufsoffener Sonntag could not occur four weeks in a row.

What do Berliners think of more regular Sunday opening hours?

“It makes no difference to me. But it’s been this way for 30 years, why change it?” Dagmar, 71, told IamExpat. “I live in Friedrichshain and between the Spätis, the supermarkets open in Ostbahnhof and Hauptbahnhof not being far away, I can get whatever I need even if it is a Sunday.” 

While Spätis currently do the heavy lifting in supplying Berliners with a desperate packet of pasta or carton of milk on Sundays, they also aren’t technically allowed to open on the “day of rest”. In recent years the Berlin Späti Association have been fighting their own battle to be granted the same status as petrol stations, which would officially allow them to be open on Sundays.

“I like Sunday shopping,” says Ani, 35, “During the week we all work and I don’t have time to go shopping when it's just one to two hours and it's always overcrowded. It’s also overcrowded on Sundays but it gives people more opportunity to do their shopping."

“Coming from Armenia where all shopping malls are open on Sundays I had to get used to the German way. But I understand that it would mean others have to work on Sundays, but I hope they would get paid more than usual. I know that employees in Germany are paid 50 percent more for working on Sundays.”

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