Budapest, March 24 (MTI) – Any measure which reduces the number of people working on Sunday should be welcomed, Janos Lazar, the head of the prime minister’s office, told Tuesday’s Nepszabadsag daily.
Out of 4 million people working in Hungary one million work on Sundays too, “which is a lot,” Lazar told the paper.
If a referendum on Sunday retail work goes ahead, the governing parties will campaign and try to persuade voters of their conviction. But if it goes the other way, they will respect voters’ decision, he said.
Peter Harrach, the head of the junior governing KDNP’s parliamentary group, said earlier that the law on Sunday shopping restrictions should be reviewed for their impact in about two months’ time and further exemptions could be incorporated.
The ministry of economy published a survey from 2011 on the government’s website on Monday. It underlined that the survey was not an impact study, as Nepszabadsag had suggested earlier. The ministry denied there has not been an impact study done on weighing up the possible outcome of the law on shopping restrictions on Sunday.
The survey showed that 54 percent of respondents surveyed in 2011 were against closing stores on Sundays, and almost 38 percent said they regularly shopped on Sundays, while 18.5 percent said they used their Sunday shopping trips to stock up for the week. About 69 percent said they did their Sunday shopping at multinational chains. Almost 60 percent said they could shop elsewhere or do their shopping on another day of the week.
Photo: MTI
