French retailers will soon be able to open on as many as 12 Sundays a year – seven more than now.

It’s another small step in the heavily socialist nation’s slow conformity to international norms – but the driving force is to create more jobs for workers rather than for any business benefit.

Shops in designated ‘tourist zones’ such as the Champs Elysee and the Marais in Paris, are already allowed by law to trade every Sunday. And they’re usually packed.

Forbes columnist Shellie Karabell in a column published online  says the move is part of a broader effort to reduce France’s deficit down to three per cent of GDP, the Eurozone’s gold standard. “But those calling this law “baby steps” and “insignificant” are missing the point.

“It is the shopping part of the law, that French bashers have got wrong by dismissing it as trivial or insufficient. This move is likely to change France more fundamentally than anything in recent history, perhaps since the adoption of the 35-hour-work-week.”

Karabell says Sunday shopping won’t bring in enough extra revenue to lower the deficit. But it will put more people to work.

“And there’s a good chance many of those shoppers will be tourists – a recent study showed the Chinese are now travelling internationally rather than staying at home for Chinese New Year, and France is one of their top three destinations.”

Most importantly, she argues, the new law will begin to change the way French people view Sunday – traditionally family time.

“It will change the way they think about working more to earn more. The concept of temporary or part-time employment will become at least less objectionable if not more acceptable in this country which used to boast ‘jobs for life’. And I have yet to encounter a salesperson working on a Sunday in the touristy Marais district who wasn’t happy about the extra commissions he or she was earning.”

Also part of the trading hours ‘reform’ plan is a proposal to swap five national Catholic holidays for non-sectarian observations: Assumption, Ascension, All Saints’ Day, Pentecost, and Easter Monday will no longer be holidays, but replaced by other observations so there will not be any changes in the number of days French work in a year.

Read the full column on Forbes online.