Goodbye Sunday Shopping in Poland - Hello Electoral Reform

Oh what a joyful start to the week. Next year we will gradually transition to a total ban on Sunday shopping. It will start next year with restrictions to shopping only on the first and last Sundays of the month - those are dates for your diary. And to give the judicial reforms some company, we will now have electoral 'reforms' which would replace all current members of the State Electoral Commission, the body responsible for conducting and overseeing elections, as well as all election commissioners.

Do they sell vodka on Sunday in Ireland, Ms. Atch?

That sounds really worrying. If the current Electoral Commission did not manipulate the results of the last parliamentary election so as PiS could win, the question would be whether the new one is good enough not to manipulate the election results so as PiS could loose.

To put it in another way: can we expect a time where PiS will never be able to loose an election?

That is clearly their aim. Those who do not speak out against it are in favor of it and are collaboratores.

In other news, Ziobro just fired the judge set to hear the appeal with regard to his father's death. Something new for the collaborators to try to justify.

Every journalists and his grandmother should be on the lookout about CVC Capital Partners having made any contributions to the PiS party this year. CVC owns the Żabka brand and its franchising network. Żabki will continue to be exempt from the sunday trading ban if they are owner operated (which it seems that almost all of them are because they all are open on days where trading is already banned today, e.g. on 11.11.).

In Hungary, they tried the same thing. Ban trading on sunday but leave the door open for owner operated stores. It is said that the owners of the CBA franchise chain, that operates like Żabka, paid a good amount into the coffers of Orbán's Fidesz to convince him. It did not work out well though because due to public pressure, the ban was cancelled in 2016. It still might work in Poland because according to recent CBOS polling, 58% favor the sunday closure.

That's what they say now as a theoretical response, it's not necessarily what they'll say when most stores are actually closed.

Closed stores still make a lot of Polish people nervous (notice the mass buying going on anytime stores will be closed for a single day....).

Oh they do indeed but only after 12 midday as a mark of respect to the Man Above :))


Yes it is. It's just that there's such a comprehensive and wide ranging number of new laws and reforms being made so quickly. It suggests that PIS are acting as swiftly as possible with some sinister purpose in mind. I'm warning you lads, if they carry on their merry way it's only a matter of time before the army will be on the streets to quell demonstrations and it'll be martial law all over again.

Welcome to the New World Order


Exactly the same thing is happening in America right now to disarm its citizens by declaring martial law.
I think Poland and the rest of the EU should be worrying more about Iran's threat right now then buying booze on Sunday.

Iran is not a threat to anyone except for the Zionist entity who deserves it for installing a system of apartheid and bombing schools and hospitals.

Hungary did the same thing for about a year but ended the law after citizens were dissatisfied with it. This only happening because of strong church support but I don't think it will last.

The first thing the Nazi's and Commies did was confiscate citizens' guns so they couldn't rebel.

I love the idea and strongly support it! Thankfully you can only adapt or gtfo :)


BULLS**T! We had sundays free of shopping before and what you wrote (lies as usually) never had place.

Yes, it was called communism. As I keep saying PiS is PRL2 the Duckening!

Look ppl lies again!!! it was in the late 1990s and 2000s when we had "niedziela handlowa". You just lie again either because you have no idea or was born later lol.

it was way after the fall if communism and there was no mass shopping on Saturdays you fool.

Those were different times in the 90s - people had no money and even if they did there were no nice stores to visit. Now it's very different and people will miss Sunday trips to the mall very much.

To me it's a question of free choice - want to go to church on Sunday ? Fine. Want to shop on Sunday ? Also fine

A ton of stores are closed on Sundays and religious holidays anyway...

I find the whole 'poor ppl in shops working on Sunday' argument so silly. What's so special about that group? Even if you don't consider fire fighters, policeman and so on you still have cooks, waiters, petrol station workers, transport workers etc It's just such bs. Does anyone believe it?

The funniest part is talking about closing stores so families can spend time together.... as if they couldn't now. Essentially PiS are saying that spending time with family is so terrible that people should be forced....

I think the point they are trying to make is that family members are often working on Sundays in addition to other days, so they don't all get time to spend together. Having to work a Sunday if you don't want to isn't great and in the retail sector it's practically unavoidable, so I suppose some people will welcome this, but personally I think it will hit the economy and tourism quite badly.

@Chemikiem

I agree it will hit economy and tourism quite badly. All these big Galerias in Krakow....

Yep, those shopping malls are definitely going to lose out on a lot of trade. In some other EU countries, Germany for example, stores are also closed on Sundays, but for Poland, a country whose economy has been steadily increasing, this seems like a step backwards to me.

Yes, that's the justification they're using but it's deliberately misleading. This is to do with religion. After all the same working conditions apply on a Saturday. Many families can't all be together on that day either, that's just the way of the world. I would be more concerned about the government ensuring decent working conditions, contracts of employment and adequate minimum wage if they want to enhance family life. This legislation is about enforcing a certain vision of what a Catholic country should be. The fact is that Sunday shopping is a part of modern Polish culture. Many people, including those families who are able to be together on Sunday, like to go to the shopping centre, meander around the shops, have coffee or lunch.

I wonder how it will affect life in the summer? What about street vendors selling ice-cream, cold drinks? Will restaurants be allowed to open? If so, then how does the government justify the fact that those who work in the catering industry will be discriminated against in this legislation as they still won't have Sundays off? So it's legislation for some, but not for all.

They announced last week that they are building missiles that can reach any of Americas allies cities in the EU.


It is a step backwards.
Has anyone figured the tax revenue Poland will lose ?
Sales tax, personal income tax, tourist dollars that are pumped into the government.
Some families have both parents working with one parent working the week end to make ends meet while the other minds the children at home.

Once the government sees the revenue that they are losing the law will be changed back.

Except that Polish people on the whole really aren't that religious so it's doomed to fail. Most Poles only get excited about religion when it's tied to political opposition and this isn't that.

Seems you should know better then that by now.
How long ago did you migrate to Poland from the United States ?

The strength of Polish catholicism is vastly over-reported in the US which goes back to the Cold War.

The rough breakdown on the ground here....

15-20 % hardcore catholic
40--50 % nominal catholic (catholic to the extent they're anything - they want to be married in the church and their kids to be baptised but don't necessarily follow all church teachings)

20-30 % will say they are catholic if you ask but you would never guess it from their behavior
5-10 % something else (including a new but still very small us style evangelical contingent)

I think the reason they went for the 2 closed days is to see how the tax revenues drop. In Hungary it did not put much of a dent on the foreign retailers market share (big retailers had big car parks and were more able to handle the Saturday extra sales). It did however cause a big fall in Vat as people had less time to spend on discretionary and fun items.

How long ago did you migrate to Poland from the United States mafketis to speak with such authority ?


Sources please.
My source disagrees with your opinion and says this;
Poland's largest grouping is the Roman Catholic Church - with 87.5% of Poles in 2011 identifying as Roman Catholic, (census conducted by the Central Statistics Office (GUS)).

65% of Polish believers attend church services on a regular basis.
After working all week and going to church on Sunday doesn't leave much time to shop.
That and the tax revenue loss makes such a decision a bad move for Poland.

Well over twenty years..... how much time have you personally spent in Poland? And how fluent is your Polish?

The GUS data doesn't contradict what I wrote which is based on personal observations and discussions with Polish people over many years.

The biggest mistake the Catholic Church made after 1990 was making 'religion' a required subject in school, most young Polish people hated those classes (I've heard first hand for many years now).

A typical of that group would be Ferdynand Kiepski from the TV sitcom "Świat według Kiepskich" who pompuosly anounces to his wife from time to time: - "Ja jezdem Polak, ja jezdem katolik!" (the audience laughs) trying to illustrate the very well known cliché "Polak-katolik".


This vision seems to be much broader than a "Catholic country" alone. This point is developed deeper in an interview with Karol Modzelewski to the POLITYKA weekly:

polityka.pl/tygodnikpolityka/historia/1727206,1,prof-karol-modzelewski-o-przyszlosci-polskiej-polityki.read
Karol Modzelewski was a well-known dissident in the communist times (it was him who invented the name "Solidarity" for this famous labour movement in 1980) and also is a well-know historian of medieval times (his fascinating book "Barbarzyńska Europa" on the barbarian Europe was translated into English as well as into French, German and several other languages). In the interview he argues that the opposition makes a mistake talking to the public of a possible "authoritarian state" under the PiS rule because these are words of foreign origin which most of the public would not comprehend. - What words should the opposition use here then ? - asks the journalist. - This is simple; they should talk of the "police" state [in the future] instead - says Modzelewski and evokes the case of the 22-year-old Igor Stachowiak who had been mistaken for a drug dealer by police and died as a result of the detention at a police station in Wrocław. Afterwards the authorities tried to sweep the true reasons leading to his death under the carpet for more than year until the time when a footage leaked from the police station to the hands of a journalist and was shown on TVN24.

(This most appaling case is desribed here pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Amier%C4%87_Igora_Stachowiaka

yeah -Poland is a police state heheh - and black squadrons of death are roaming the streets - sure sure

Very good news! It should not all be about making money.This is a great move reminding us about our spirituality. Sunday is a day of rest, day of spiritual meditation or thought. We should follow our Slavic soul which is first and foremost about deep spirituality, something that westerners never really had. How could a westerner understand such a concept when it is all about money in the west?

Yes of course that's true. The concept of Poland as the perfect 'Catholic' model state is only part of it. The scope of change is breath-taking really. The army, the courts, the electoral commission, the press, the education system...........the really worrying thing is that with the army, courts and elections re-jigged by PIS with their supporters in all key positions, we know where that's heading.