Ikea, the home furnishings retailer, was fined ?450,000 last week for staying open on Sundays in a Paris suburb. A big French home improvement chain, Castorama, was sued for nearly as much - also for violating a 102-year-old requirement that French companies close on Sunday. Both cases show that the stakes are mounting in a long-running battle between French labor unions and retailers over Sunday shopping. The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to shed the old restriction as part of a broader plan to stimulate the French economy. Advocates of the 1906 law, determined to prevent its demise, are digging in and demanding ever-higher fines against violators of a rule that they say supports a particular French way of life, one that is not obsessed with spending.
See "Stakes get higher as French unions fight Sunday store openings", Devorah Lauter, International Herald Tribune, April 6, 2008