Coronavirus in Hungary: Non-essential shops open and risk being fined

Several business owners are reported to have run out of their savings over the last couple of weeks and decided to open up again, going against the current restrictions. Non-essential shopping will be monitored by the police, and violators will be fined.

Magyar Nemzet reports that several shop owners decided after a few weeks of shutting down to open again, going against current government restrictions. Right before Easter, the government extended restrictions on movement indefinitely to combat the novel coronavirus epidemic. According to these restrictions, people are only allowed to leave their homes to go to work or to run essential errands. Essential errands include grocery shopping, visiting the pharmacy or drugstore, and getting certain appliances one needs for their daily work. However, shopping for shoes, clothes, furniture, toys, books, or jewellery does not count as an essential errand.

According to statistics, there are at least 50,000 shops in the Hungarian market that cannot take customers until the restrictions are loosened or revoked. Nevertheless, several shops decided not to wait any longer and opened anyway. They argue that the economy did not stop, they are running out of savings, and they need profit to survive.

All the same, both owners and customers are violating the rules. The businesses that remain open and keep the pretence that people are free to go in, as well as those customers who visit these shops when it is clearly not an essential errand, will be fined by the police.

As we have reported earlier, the government decided to extend restrictions on movement for another week from this Saturday. Therefore, all previous restrictions still apply for the commerce and trade sector as well. Apart from grocery stores, pharmacies, and drugstores, people are allowed to visit certain other places until 3 p.m. One example is hardware stores, as long as they need to buy appliances for their work.

Source: www.magyarnemzet.hu