EU Polls The Public About Abandoning Daylight Savings Time (europa.eu)

"Following a number of requests from citizens, from the European Parliament, and from certain EU Member States, the Commission has decided to investigate the functioning of the current EU summertime arrangements and to assess whether or not they should be changed."

The EU has launched an official "online consultation" seeking input from the public. Long-time Slashdot reader mitch0 writes: The consultation was started after some member states expressed the opinion that the daylight saving time should be abolished within the EU. There were some local motions in member countries as well, but these cannot really proceed without full coordination with all member states.

So far it seems that most of those wanting to end the daylight-saving change would stick to summer time all-year round, but the questionnaire has a specific question about this issue so a more representative result is expected after the survey is closed in the middle of August...

Citizens can express their opinion about the summer time change by filling out a short online survey.

Comments

DST

[SenseiTim]

Daylight Saving Time is a pain in the butt. There is no rational reason why we have to fool around with our clocks twice a year.

Re:DST

[GuB-42]

There is a rational reason. It is to make people wake up with the sun, more or less.
Here: http://gpinzone.blogspot.com/2...

Re:DST

[cayenne8]

What electricity savings from DST? Studies conclude that if anything, DST costs more electricity to cool/heat a building than it saves in lighting.

Yep, and not only that, we see spikes in heart attacks/death every time we fsck with the clocks and having it mess with our internal clocks.

I wish we could abolish it in the US too.

Re:DST

[apoc.famine]

Isn't that the one benefit of DST changes? If it wasn't for the clock change, those heart attacks would have happened at random. No way to plan for those. At least with the clock change you can prep for the increased load of patients, right?

Re:DST

[hcs_$reboot]

There is no rational reason why we have to fool around with our clocks twice a year.

No rational reason? Mid-northern latitudes (~40-50 degrees) have about 16 hours sunlight in summer, and only 8 in winter. In summer, 1 hour is added to the clock, so that the sunrise is not at 5am (6 instead), and people benefit from late sunlight since this is a holiday season. In winter with no hour added sunrises happens at an earlier time, otherwise people would go to work in total darkness.

Re:DST

[EvilSS]

otherwise people would go to work in total darkness

so instead we go home in total darkness.

Structural problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine there's going to be quite a marked geographic divide on this. Southern Europe probably DGAF as they don't get the sort of seasonal variation in daylight hours you get in the north, and the very far north of Europe they have such extremes of variation in daylight hours that fudging the clocks by an hour makes no real difference. However there's going to be a band across the middle (UK, France, Germany, etc) where there exists the right balance between having a problem, and being able to somewhat remedy it by moving your clocks for a few months.

The problem of course is that whatever is decided is going to be foist onto everyone regardless of need or want, because that's how the EU rolls

Re:Structural problems

[Hognoxious]

Southern Europe probably DGAF as they don't get the sort of seasonal variation in daylight hours

Plus they sleep all day anyway.

Re:Not DST

[mitch0]

The submission may have been a bit misleading, but it is not DST that is proposed to get abolished, but the DST change. So, each country is free to chose the timezone they'd like to remain in after the DST change is ended. There is a specific question for this in the poll as well (keep summer time, keep winter time or "don't care").

I sure as hell hope the DST change will be ended, and we'll stick to summer time.

Re:Not DST

[Hognoxious]

You can move your ass an hour earlier out of the bed, no reason why the whole world has to do it!

There's little point in me getting to school an hour before the prof, or to the supermarket before the staff.

And I hear there are these things called jobs where it's sometimes necessary for several people to be there together.

Re:Not DST

[Misagon]

How much light you have on a day depends on how close to a pole you live, and if it is summer or winter.
Judging from your username I suppose you are in Southern USA. Well, southern Europe is about as far north as northern USA.

For me in Stockholm in Northern Europe, the sun sets today at 10 pm and rises at 03:47 am CET. One hour forwards or backwards would not matter because it is TOO BRIGHT anyway.

BTW, in the middle of winter, if the day is cloudy it may only get as bright as the summer nights are darkest. But then we don't have DST.

Openning hours

[DrYak]

This has already been tried several times over the years and always with the same result: People discover that they don't like it being dark longer in the morning during the winter.

...which you can also compensate by changing working hours.

And several business have different opening hours during the seasons anyway (e.g.: due to reduced work force due to vacations in summer).
So giving summer-specific opening hours that also happen to take into account the variation of sun time isn't that far fetched.

(E.g.: public transport has different time tables at different time of the year, public services tend to have reduced opening hours due to lots of them going into vacations, hospitals emergencies work in shifts around the clock anyway, movie schedule change each week with new release, work-from-home and artists put their own work hours anyway, university research team tend to have the most WTF work hours specially for PhD students (except for that guy who has Eukaryotik cell cultures. He needs to feed them every 32 hours no matter how out of sync it gets with any rational work schedule), etc. Shops are about the only things which seem to open at a constant timetable.)

It used to make sense to shift clocks back in the industrial era when most of the activities were dictated by fixed time schedules and nearly everybody needed to be in sync (factory working ours).
Nowadays, in our mostly service-sector-based type of work, you need to check (e.g.: online on your smartphone) the opening hours and time schedule for probably around 7 out of 10 business. Supressing DST will simply make you check for the last remaining 3 too, instead of relying on fixed clock times.

Re:Let's do Metric Time Instead!

[magarity]

No more need for time zones, or the dreaded DST, at all! One time zone to rule them all!

You're trying to be funny but actually in China this is exactly what they do. The whole country is on Beijing Time despite being what would normally be a 4 time zone wide country. And they don't bother with DST either.

Old Native American saying

[mschuyler]

Only the White Man would cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it on the bottom, and proclaim he had a longer blanket.

Should abandon CET

[starless]

A lot of the western European countries (e.g. Spain, France) should abandon Central European Time (CET) of any type.
It doesn't make any sense since since they're in western and not central Europe.
That's one reason people eat so late in Spain, as they're to the west of England.

Instead they should use WET (Western European Time), i.e. essentially follow the UK....