The Committee on Economy, Finance and Budget gave the green light to amendments to the Law on Internal Trade, or rather proposed to the Parliament to adopt them and return the non-working Sunday to the economy.
Thus, today, the parliament will discuss amendments to Article 35a of this Law submitted by MPs from the Europe Now Movement (PES), which again require a non-working Sunday to protect the health of workers in wholesale and retail stores and their right to a weekly rest on public and other holidays.
These amendments will enter into force eight days after their publication in the Official Gazette of Montenegro.
The MPs also supported the amendment submitted today by Europe Now MP Miloš Pižurica, which has become an integral part of this regulation. Pižurica and his PES colleagues requested that exceptions from the non-working Sunday be pharmacies, specialized stores or kiosks, gas stations, markets, stands, shops, kiosks at bus and train stations, airports and ports, as well as those during events, festivals and fairs, wholesale warehouses...
In addition to wholesale warehouses, this amendment stipulates that the opening hours of the facility - from Monday to Saturday - are determined by the retailer.
Pižurica stated that they reacted so that workers would not lose the rights they received in 2019, and that they did so mostly for the sake of those who work in stores.
Secretary General of the Association of Oil Companies Draško Striković expressed his gratitude that the gas stations were exempted from this solution, while Pižurica stated that gas stations have reduced the assortment intended for passengers and introduced fruit, vegetables, dairy products and meat - so this sector will be further regulated later.
The Democratic Party of Socialists announced their support for this proposal.
At the end of January, the Constitutional Court ruled that Article 35a of the Internal Trade Act, which prohibited shops from operating on Sundays and on public and other holidays, was unconstitutional. The decision was officially published in the Official Gazette on February 12, which means that traders currently have the right to operate on Sundays. The Government had previously appealed to them not to start business on this day until the ruling majority reintroduces Sunday as a non-working day.
On November 10, the "Europe Now" group of MPs sent the Parliament a proposal to amend Article 35a by adding a sentence at the beginning of the new article that "in order to prevent and protect the health of employees in retail establishments," their work cannot be performed on Sundays and on public and other holidays, and then repeating almost the same text of the now-cancelled article.
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