Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Switzerland mulls allowing shops to open up to 12 Sundays per year

Council of States committee wants to allow up to twelve Sunday sales
Council of States committee wants to allow up to twelve Sunday sales Keystone-SDA

Swiss cantons could soon be allowed to authorise shops to open on up to 12 Sundays a year, up from the current limit of four. This proposal, backed by a Swiss Senate committee, follows a request from canton Zurich.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The Economic Affairs Committee of the Senate voted 10 to 2 in favour of a parliamentary initiative, according to parliamentary services on Tuesday. The House of Representatives’ sister committee will make the next decision on this matter.

The committee describes this proposal as moderate, stating it would give retailers a tool to better compete with online sellers. The initiative also considers the evolving shopping habits of the population, according to the press release.

However, the committee has rejected further relaxation of Sunday trading rules, as proposed by the House of Representatives. This change would have permitted small grocery stores to open on Sundays.

Translated from German by DeepL/sp

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR