If the death of the high street has been announced for years, it has been a slow decline with dedicated commercial areas often bustling. A walk down Brussels' Boulevard Anspach or The Meir in Antwerp can easily give the impression that business is good with no shortage of footfall.
However, behind the facade of big household brands that have become ubiquitous across the continent, trying to make it as a smaller business is ever more difficult. Margins are shrinking as many struggle to stay afloat amid exorbitant rents in prime retail areas and unbeatable prices online. The coronavirus pandemic has done nothing to help these shops in their plight.
So when the socialist party leader Paul Magnette spoke of his belief that Belgium should buck global trends and become "a country without e-commerce", his remarks were met with varying degrees of accord and rebuke. Evoking almost halcyon pre-pandemic days, Magnette envisioned a country "without e-commerce, with real shops and lively cities.”
This idea is undoubtedly appealing to many who hark back to the good old days when you knew your butcher and baker and shopping was a more convivial and community experience than has now become. But for many, shopping online has become part and parcel of a daily routine so full of other activities that there is little time to spare.
Magnette did later clarify his position, acknowledging that of course, he's not calling for an outright ban on e-commerce but rather a greater awareness of the environmental and health impacts of relaxing the laws for online retailers. In particular, Magnette objects to the idea of those working in warehouses working beyond midnight simply "because people want to receive their parcels at home within 24 hours."
And if this means some businesses relocating their warehouses to neighbouring countries where laws are less strict – namely the Netherlands – Magnette questions whether this wouldn't actually be a good thing, not least for the small retailers who can hardly compete in the arena of online giants and the race to the bottom.
Could you get by without online shopping? Let @Orlando_tbt know.
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1. ‘Let’s make Belgium a country without e-commerce,’ say socialists
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