All the mayors and municipal heads coming from the Fokus party support the initiative of the Voice of Entrepreneurs Association (UGP) to enable the work of entrepreneurs who want to work on Sundays and public holidays, and will declare August 15 a fair day in order to rebel against Sunday shop closure.

A press release states that Pirovac, as one of the popular summer tourist centers, will join the protest, as will Samobor, Sveta Nedelja, Dugo Selo, Sveti Ivan Zelina and the municipality of Kriz.

They also say that all the mayors and leaders of those towns agree with the position that the new law is absurd, and they hope that the constitutionality test will show that the government had made a mistake because in its pre-election desire to please the voters, it ended up causing damage to entrepreneurs and citizens, while store workers are threatened with layoffs in the long run.

The president of the Fokus party, Davor Nadji, said that the current situation is as he predicted it would be – gas stations are selling bread, large retail chains are rotating people to different stores, and retail trade is lower than it would be if they worked on Sundays.

“We are just waiting for betting shops to start selling groceries, and for cinemas to include fresh milk in their offer. “Small family shops are the ones that suffer the most damage,” he said.

Nađi also believes that all the arguments about banning the opening of shops on Sundays simply have nothing to do with logic and reality.

Decisions on declaring the Feast of the Assumption a fair day have been made by Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot, Sveta Nedelja Mayor Dario Zurovec,  Dugo Selo Mayor Nenad Panian, Sveti Ivan Zelina Mayor Hrvoje Koscec, Pirovac Mayor Ivan Gulam and the head of Kriz municipality, Marko Magdic.

The mayor of Pula, Filip Zoricic, too, on Wednesday declared the Feast of the Assumption a fair day, while on Thursday, the mayor of Split, Ivica Puljak, declared all Sundays until the end of September as well as the Feast of the Assumption fair days, to enable local shops to work on Sundays and public holidays despite the Sunday shopping ban.

Similar decisions have also been adopted by the towns of Umag, Hvar, Labin, Novalja, Supetar, Bol, Sutivan, Jelsa, Stari Grad, Baska, Podgora, and Pirovac as well as many others, including those whose mayors are members of the ruling HDZ party, like Crikvenica.

Under the amended Labour Act in force, a shop is only able to open Sundays on a maximum of 16 weekends. Retailers are given discretion on if, and when, to utilise the exemptions.