Italy’s new government announced on Sunday that it will move to ban Sunday shopping in large commercial centers in order to protect the family, Reuters reported.
Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Sunday that the new government would seek to reverse the 2012 liberalization of Sunday shopping laws, put forward by then Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, and opposed by the Catholic Church.
“This liberalization is in fact destroying Italian families,” said Di Maio.“We need to start limiting opening and closing times again,” he said, according to the Reuters report.
In March of this year, Poland banned shopping on Sundays, a move supported by the Catholic Church and the trade union Solidarity, which fought for a day off for its workers.
A 2015 ban on Sunday shopping in Hungary was repealed a year after it went into effect due to its unpopularity.
If Sunday shopping were indeed restricted once again in Italy, the country would join several other European countries, including Hungary, Germany, Austria, France and Spain in limiting Sunday shopping to varying degrees.
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