The far-reaching liberalization of retail opening hours is one of the great successes of Hessian politics;

the inhabitants of this country have long since become accustomed to shopping in supermarkets, especially in the evening.

Young people listen in amazement when you tell them that not so long ago that the doors were closed at 6:30 p.m. and on Saturdays it was already at noon.

So if the head of the retail chain Tegut from Fulda thinks that the energy costs for opening into the evening are too high, he is of course free to shorten the opening hours of his own shops.

However, there is no reason whatsoever to get politicians involved and reverse liberalization as such in order to force other companies to follow the same course.

Perhaps they will find other ways of dealing with the high energy costs?

Skills shortage accelerates automation

This also applies to the debate that briefly flared up a few days ago as to whether furniture stores should close one day a week to save energy.

Of course they can. But there are no rules for that either, every furniture store can proceed as it wishes.

Thomas Gutberlet did not cite the shortage of skilled workers as a reason for reducing opening hours.

No wonder: Tegut has already taken a forward-looking path in this regard.

Under the Teo brand, the company operates more and more small, automated supermarkets that do not require staff but are accessible 24/7.

The shops are not large and therefore hardly suitable for weekly shopping.

But with their high-tech monitoring, they show that the need for personnel can also be reduced without lowering the supply.

Food supply will not remain the only field where lack of staff will lead to automation.

One can confidently assume that everyone in the economy has long been considering how bottlenecks can be bridged with technology.

Those who grew up in a period of mass unemployment will not easily lose their skepticism about this path, but those years were a long time ago.

What has remained is that in a market economy, companies have to look for future-oriented solutions independently.

A legal reduction in the permitted shop opening times would be a step backwards, which would otherwise only help online sellers anyway.

They have no closing time at all.