What does Flanders’ first seven-day artisan bakery reveal about Belgium’s new shop rules?

Brood en Banket Neirinck in Machelen-aan-de-Leie, East Flanders

Lieu

East Flanders

Belgian province containing Zulte.

Pourquoi c’est important

Belgian province containing Zulte.

About

East Flanders is a province of Belgium. It borders the Dutch province of Zeeland and the Belgian provinces of Antwerp, Flemish Brabant, Hainaut and West Flanders. It has an area of 3,007 km2 (1,161 sq mi), divided into six administrative districts containing 60 municipalities, and a population of over 1.57 million as of January 2024. The capital is Ghent, home to the Ghent University and the Port of Ghent.

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For customers in and around Zulte, the immediate change is simple: a familiar local bakery can now trade every day rather than closing for an uninterrupted 24-hour period each week. For independent retailers, however, the decision raises a harder commercial question. An extra opening day can create sales and convenience, but it can also spread the same demand across more hours while increasing staffing, energy and personal workload.

The legal change is nationwide, not a Flemish initiative. The federal law of 20 July was published in the Belgian Official Gazette on 3 August and took effect ten days later, according to the Association of Flemish Cities and Municipalities, VVSG. Most shops may now open from 05:00 until 21:00 on all seven days, the Flemish Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, VLAIO, explains. Services such as hairdressers and hospitality businesses, as well as online shops without direct customer contact, fall outside this general opening-hours regime.

Federal minister for the Self-Employed and SMEs Eléonore Simonet

That freedom to open must not be confused with an unrestricted right to schedule employees. Simonet told the federal parliament in July that the bill altered shop-opening rules but did not amend labour law. The Federal Public Service Employment says bakeries and patisseries already benefit from an exception allowing Sunday work, but employees who work on Sunday remain entitled to compensatory rest within the following six days. The distinction matters less to a proprietor working alone than to a bakery operating with a production and sales team.

Vincent Van Quickenborne, an Anders member of parliament, welcomed greater commercial freedom but called the reform incomplete because rules on Sunday employment were not aligned with the new opening rights. In his parliamentary exchange with Simonet, he warned that seven-day opening could become an ‘empty shell’ for shops unable to deploy staff legally. Bakeries are better placed than ordinary retailers because of their existing sectoral exception, although employment contracts, working-time limits and rest requirements still apply.

Local authorities have a different concern. VVSG says the final law took little or no account of advice it submitted in 2025. Municipalities must now decide whether longer opening creates enough convenience and economic activity to outweigh possible effects on noise, traffic, enforcement and the character of neighbourhood shopping streets.

There is no substantial EU institutional dimension: retail opening hours and Sunday-work arrangements remain principally Belgian competences, constrained by general European working-time protections rather than directed by an EU-wide shop-hours policy. The broader European trend is nevertheless recognisable—governments are giving retailers more flexibility as consumer routines and competition from always-available online commerce evolve.

Neirinck’s experiment will therefore be watched less as a legal novelty than as a business test. The unanswered questions are whether Sunday and late-day sales cover the additional costs, whether staff schedules remain sustainable and whether nearby retailers follow. Belgium has removed the mandatory day off for the shop door; it has not removed the economic or human need for rest.