A Facebook post from Alexander Muthmann went through the roof at the weekend and is still doing it. From Saturday evening until today, Monday, 1 p.m., the contribution reached 204,365 people across Germany, was shared 1,800 times and commented on 339 times. The occasion is a photo that Muthmann put on his account. It shows advertising brochures from various supermarkets that offer clothing, shoes, sports equipment, bedding, electronics and small furniture at rock-bottom prices. Muthmann added the comment: “And our specialist dealers? Have to lock up and watch the chain stores do business. An untenable situation! ”With this he hit a nerve in the population, the FDP politician assesses the reaction to his post. Many users wrote to him saying they expected an initiative beyond words, and Muthmann launched it today. He wrote an urgent motion, which the FDP parliamentary group will bring to the plenary assembly of the Bavarian state parliament on Wednesday, January 27, 2021. This decision was made at noon. “Then the plenary will vote on whether this injustice towards retailers will be removed. I’m curious to see how the CSU and Free Voters behave, who always pretend to uphold the middle class, ”says Muthmann.
The idea for the Facebook post arose spontaneously: On Saturday afternoon, Alexander Muthmann took a stack of advertising leaflets from various supermarkets out of his mailbox. He still had the concerns of the retailers from the Freyung-Grafenau district in his ear, who had described their existence-threatening situation to him in a video conference a few days earlier, which had arisen for them with the renewed lockdown since Christmas 2020. “And the chain stores do the trouble,” said Muthmann annoyed and responded in the evening with the Facebook entry. The flood of letters confirmed his opinion. For example, retailers complained about the huge non-food range of the discounters. One user wrote: “Unfortunately, we as a flower shop are also affected. The decorative items and flower corners in the supermarkets are being set up endlessly and the flower shops are gnawing at hunger pangs. ”Because of the special offers with goods from the most diverse areas, people crowded at the rooting tables, the prescribed distances were far from being observed.
Advertising leaflets from various discounters.
“It cannot be that discounters make large amounts of money with non-food goods and that medium-sized companies fall by the wayside with their sophisticated hygiene concepts,” emphasizes Muthmann. The current situation represents an interference with freedom of competition and the associated equal opportunities that are no longer acceptable, which is constitutionally guaranteed and must therefore also be guaranteed under corona conditions. The current situation, on the other hand, leads to a competitive advantage for the large markets, to an unnecessary concentration of customers in these stores and, especially with special promotions, to a considerable increase in the risk of infection. Muthmann fears that even more businesses will run into financial difficulties, that there will be undesirable market concentrations and jobs will be lost if the existing legal situation is continued.
The politician also argues with the effects on the quality of life of people in Bavaria, especially in rural regions. The owners of the specialty shops, which are often family-run companies, act as sponsors and supporters of associations and support sporting, cultural, charitable and church events. They are therefore of inestimable value for social life beyond their entrepreneurial performance.
The request to the state government is therefore to place the necessary trust in the stationary specialist trade and let them work again. The number of customers per area is limited anyway and FFP2 masks are mandatory. Then there is only a very low risk of infection, even according to scientific expertise. “With such an opening of the specialist trade, the scientific requirements would also be taken into account, according to which the decisive factor is not the reduction of contacts in general, but the avoidance of unsecured, unprotected contacts,” emphasizes Alexander Muthmann. He is looking forward to the vote on Wednesday in the plenary session of the Bavarian State Parliament.
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