Court decision appealed City of Bonn tries to rescue Sunday shopping

Bonn · The Bonn city administration has filed an appeal against the decision of a Cologne court to ban Sunday shopping in the next few weeks of Advent. It’s down to the wire as this coming Sunday is affected.

Whether or not the shops will be open this Sunday in Bonn and the following Sunday in Bad Godesberg depends on a court in Münster. The City of Bonn announced on Tuesday that it would appeal a decision by the Administrative Court of Cologne which ruled to prohibit shopping on the two Sundays in question. The reason was a complaint by the trade union Verdi. It is now up to The Higher Administrative Court of Münster to decide.

The administration is confident that it will be able to convince the court of the legality of its decision to approve Sunday shopping in conjunction with the Christmas markets in Bonn. The two Sundays in question are December 9 for Bonn city center and December 16 for Bad Godesberg city center. City director Wolfgang Fuchs is now hoping for a decision until Friday, “so that the Sunday shopping days can be rescued”.

In the interim, the city had tried to get into a dialogue with the Verdi trade union in order to reach a compromise solution. “Unfortunately, this was not successful,” said Fuchs.

As reported, the Cologne court justified its decision by stating that the City of Bonn had made a formal error in how it filed the request. Britta Munkler of the Verdi union said the city was free to file an appeal but she didn’t think it would work. She added that Verdi had been paying closer attention to requests for Sunday shopping since this year and that city administrations had been sloppy in their filings. But the press office of the City of Bonn issued a statement saying the city was confident it had followed all the legal guidelines and that is why it has made an appeal to the court in Münster.

(Orig. text: Lisa Inhoffen / Translation: ck)

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