Branch ban

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The branch ban (official name: "Federal Decree on the Prohibition of Opening and Expanding Department Stores, Department Stores, Uniform Price Shops and Branch Businesses ") was a statutory restriction on the constitutionally guaranteed economic freedom in Switzerland , which was in force from 1933 to 1945. This dirigistic measure was intended to lead medium-sized retailers out of their crisis by forbidding companies with uniform price stores , branch stores , department stores and department stores to open new shops or to expand existing ones.

decision

Since the beginning of the global economic crisis in October 1929, medium-sized retailers in Switzerland have come under increasing pressure. The reasons were the marked weakening of the domestic economy, the maintenance of the structure , which is characterized by cartelism , of the extremely fragmented sector and, in particular, the growing competition from new forms of sales. The existing since the late 1890s department stores in 1925 came mobile shop and store outlets of Migros and 1930, the unit price transactions by EPA added. With the exception of Migros, these companies were owned by foreign and Jewish families. They served as scapegoats for the economic failure of small shopkeepers. The middle class movement New Switzerland and politicians, who represented the interests of various business associations and anti-liberal positions of the extreme right-wing movement , called for legal measures to protect the industry.

On January 30, 1933, the Swiss Association of Retailers issued a declaration calling for an “emergency ordinance ... against the expansion of department stores, peddling and sales cars”. Two months later, National Councilor Fritz Joss ( BGB ) submitted a motion . She called for the revision of Article 31 of the Federal Constitution (freedom of trade and commerce) and the enactment of an emergency ordinance "to remedy the dangers threatening medium-sized businesses", as well as a law against new large department stores, uniform price transactions and "similar strange companies and the trade in goods". Joss used his influence as “Federal Leader” of New Switzerland and Vice-President of the Swiss Trade Association (SGV), whereupon the latter almost unanimously expressed its support at its delegates' meeting. Walter Amstalden ( KVP ) submitted a similar motion to the Council of States to protect the existence of medium-sized companies, which was supposed to do without constitutional amendments and emergency ordinances.

A fierce public debate ensued, in which Migros founder Gottlieb Duttweiler in particular intervened with numerous submissions and newspaper articles. The draft law submitted by Federal Councilor Edmund Schulthess was discussed in both chambers of parliament on October 14, 1933. It envisaged a nationwide ban on the creation or expansion of department stores, department stores and unit price stores. In addition, the cantons should be able to decide for themselves whether they wanted to apply for a ban on branch business of large retail companies. This point was controversial because it affected the stores of consumer cooperatives . Joss and Amstalden wanted to avoid the addition because they wanted primarily to hit Jewish companies and Migros, but they did not succeed. With a relatively narrow 55 to 49 votes, the National Council decided to declare the federal resolution , which is limited to two years, urgent, while the Council of States approved this point without opposition. Under the law of the time, urgent federal resolutions were withdrawn from the optional referendum , so that no referendum was possible.

Effects

The Federal Council applied the new law restrictively. For eight cantons it approved retroactive effect to September 5 and extended the ban on November 10, 1933 to include branch stores of large companies in the food retail sector. Branches that were opened between September 5 and October 14 had to be closed again. On November 28, the Federal Council extended the ban to the shoe trade and approved other cantons to retroactively. The canton of Basel-Stadt was the only one to require permission to continue opening and expanding branches on its territory. Duttweiler took up the fight against the branch ban and in 1934 organized a petition that was signed by 230,000 people in twelve cantons; 115,000 signatures were collected in the canton of Zurich alone . The Association of Swiss Consumers (VSK), the forerunner of Coop , also fought against the branch ban with the support of trade unions, employee associations and the Social Democratic Party and collected a further 570,000 signatures with its own petition.

As early as 1933, the renowned constitutional lawyer Fritz Fleiner stated in an expert report for the Federal Council that the branch ban was unconstitutional. The following year Zaccaria Giacometti came to a similar conclusion in the Schweizerische Juristen-Zeitung : “The political federal authorities seem to distrust the people and are gradually losing faith in democracy. For the sake of a real or supposed instantaneous state of emergency, the foundations of democracy are unconstitutionally abandoned in specific individual cases. [...] With the referendum democracy the Swiss state stands or falls. " Despite the petitions and contrary to legal opinion, the Federal Council proposed on July 2, 1935 that the urgent federal resolution should be extended for a further two years. Parliament approved the motion on September 27, 1935, but added an additional article to the federal resolution. This stated that the Federal Council could exempt large companies from observing the ban on branches if a contractual agreement could be made with the relevant associations.

In practice, the exemption had no effect and the political pressure from Migros and the VSK continued. On October 28, 1937, the federal decree was extended again for two years. All consumer cooperatives that had been running sales outlets before May 1, 1935, were now exempt from the branch ban. The federal decree of 1942 finally no longer made a distinction between whether a cooperative was founded before or after this randomly determined date. Migros, which was converted from a stock corporation into a cooperative in 1941, would have benefited from this, but an agreement with the associations was another two years away. With the recognition as a self-help cooperative by the federal authorities, it was no longer subject to the branch ban on January 1, 1945, but remained subject to a reporting obligation when the branch ban was expanded through a voluntary agreement with the SGV limited to one year. Hans Munz , National Councilor of the State Ring of Independents , achieved with much noticed newspaper articles and speeches that the unconstitutional ban on branches was finally lifted completely on January 1, 1946.

The federal popular initiative “Return to direct democracy” , which was narrowly adopted on September 11, 1949 , ensured, among other things, that parliament could no longer withdraw urgent federal decisions from the optional referendum in the future, making laws such as the branch ban practically unenforceable from now on.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ingrid Liebeskind Sauthier: department stores. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . May 1, 2015 , accessed September 23, 2019 .
  2. ^ Häsler: The Migros Adventure. P.56.
  3. ^ Häsler: The Migros Adventure. P. 59.
  4. ^ Häsler: The Migros Adventure. Pp. 60-61.
  5. ^ Häsler: The Migros Adventure. P. 57.
  6. ^ Häsler: The Migros Adventure. P. 62.
  7. ↑ a b Christina Börner: The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. An American Migros? In: The Migros Cosmos. Pp. 62-64.
  8. ^ Häsler: The Migros Adventure. P. 313.
  9. ↑ Curt Riess : Gottlieb Duttweiler - a biography of Curt Riess . Europa Verlag, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-905811-32-2 , pp. 316 (new edition of the book from 1958, published by Wegner Hamburg and Arche-Verlag Zurich).
  10. ↑ 125 years of Gottlieb Duttweiler - economic and political legacy. (PDF) Federation of Migros Cooperatives, August 15, 2013, p. 4 , accessed on September 24, 2019 .