A return to the past? Will we have Sunday shop closings in Italy, again?

Italy suffers from rather high unemployment and jobless rates. Especially, youth unemployment and unemployment in certain geographical areas are largely perceived as a problem to urgently cope with. Thus, over the last 10-15 years, almost all political parties included in their political agendas some reforms of the employment law legislation.

Alas, often, the promises made during the election campaigns actually end up in reforms. Over the last 10 years, every single government (and we had several of them) passed at least one big employment law reform. 

But were these continuous “Copernican revolutions” in Italian employment and labor law actually effective? 

This is at least arguable. Every single government proposes its very personal receipt, in order to invert the negative unemployment and jobless trend of the last years. This although statistical or scientific studies on the actual effects of the reforms are widely lacking. Hence, no “hard data” on the impact of the reforms are available. For political parties it is much more important to publicly show their engagement than obtaining an actual long-term effect. 

Some reforms might have had positive effects, others might have had less. For sure, often, the ideas underlying to the reforms were not particularly new, but merely proposing to cancel the reforms passed by the previous government and to return to the past.

This regards also the latest bill of law, recently presented by the current Italian government, which proposes to close down commercial exercises on Sundays. This would turn the clock back to 2006 (art. 3, law no. 248 dated August 4th, 2006), when Sunday openings were liberalized as experimental measure to boost economics and employment. Subsequently, in 2011 (Law Decree n. 201 dated December 6th, 2011), this experimental measure became definite and general. 

But is this bill really turning back the clock?

This is not entirely true. 

Sunday openings would be permitted for 26 (out of 52) Sundays per year. Moreover, openings on 4 (out of 12) national public holidays remain possible. But how these opening days would be fixed? According to the bill, it will be up to the Regional administrations to determine the actual openings during the year. In other words, each single territory within Italy will have its own rule. 

But there is even more than that. For a lot of exercises the ban on openings on Sundays will not apply.

A general exception regards small shops (i) up to 150 square meters, if located in municipalities with a population of less than 10.000 or (ii) up to 250 square meters, if located within municipalities with a population of less than 10.000. These shops do not fall under the scope of the bill. 

Further exceptions regard: (a) shops that sell goods that fall under state monopoly, (b) shops within camping lots and touristic villages, (c) shops located alongside car highways, within railway stations, within ports and airports, (d) newspaper kiosks and bookshops, (e) ice cream, pastry and fry shops, (f) specialized shops selling beverages, flowers and plants, furniture, music and video, art, antiques, prints, cards, souvenirs, local handicraft and cinemas.

In the light of the geographical differences and the long list of exceptions (some of them hardly understandable or justifiable), as first comment, one might say that – should the bill be passed – the resulting system would be rather chaotic. We would neither have a real return to the past nor the current liberalization of the system.