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European Parliament Set To End EU-Wide Daylight Saving (dw.com)
The European Commission and European Parliament are set to end daylight saving time in 2021, at least in some states. "Now that the lead committee on transport and tourism has given its blessing, by a large majority, EU lawmakers could vote on the change by the end of March," reports Deutsche Welle. "After that, all 28 member states will need to rubberstamp the ruling." From the report: European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's brash statement back in September, asserting that the amendment would go ahead quickly, has proven to be premature. At the time, Juncker was referring to an overwhelming response to an EU online survey, where an unexpected 80 percent of respondents said the practice of changing the clock twice a year was outdated. But the survey was not representative, with 3 million of the 4.6 million votes coming from Germany. This led to diplomats from smaller EU countries complaining behind closed doors that the European Commission wanted to impose German will on the other states through sheer populism.
Juncker was keen to abolish the twice-yearly time shift by spring, probably so he could claim, before European Parliament elections in May, that the will of the people had been reflected. But some member states demanded a transitional period up to 2021. Good things come to those who wait, it seems, especially in the EU. As a compromise for the repeal of the "Directive on summer time," spring or autumn in 2020 has now been suggested. This means that by June EU states will have to draw the lines for each time zone and decide what time those places will set their clocks to, and when. Some EU members -- including the United Kingdom, Greece and Portugal -- want to stick to the old rules and continue to switch between summer and winter time through the year. Cyprus, the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Ireland have not decided. The other states want to get rid of the twice-yearly change, but still have to decide which time will apply.
Juncker was keen to abolish the twice-yearly time shift by spring, probably so he could claim, before European Parliament elections in May, that the will of the people had been reflected. But some member states demanded a transitional period up to 2021. Good things come to those who wait, it seems, especially in the EU. As a compromise for the repeal of the "Directive on summer time," spring or autumn in 2020 has now been suggested. This means that by June EU states will have to draw the lines for each time zone and decide what time those places will set their clocks to, and when. Some EU members -- including the United Kingdom, Greece and Portugal -- want to stick to the old rules and continue to switch between summer and winter time through the year. Cyprus, the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Ireland have not decided. The other states want to get rid of the twice-yearly change, but still have to decide which time will apply.
for constantly updated tzdata files.
Otherwise, how would you know what time it is someplace else? Unless you use UTC...
Now we have a situation where the Brexiteer propaganda machine has won a huge victory because "The EU" is imposing on us what we actually want, so of course we don't want it. (We are totally committed to cutting of our noses to spite our faces as well as shooting our selves in the foot).
It is the British way!
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Who dat and why does the rest of the EU care? :D
Seriously though it's about time. But knowing my luck, they'll be using summer time. However, being constantly one hour off beats switching twice a year. By a long shot.
I'm happy to stop changing the clocks, but I don't want to stick to summer time. I don't like the sky still being bright at night when I need to get to sleep for work in the morning.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Problem with DST is that people don't understand the consequences of their choices. An oft heard argument is that one wants to keep DST year round, because they're a night dweller and they like the extra hour of light at the end of the day in winter too.
What they don't understand is there is also an extra hour of dark at the start of the day. They'll have to get up an hour earlier in winter because of permanent DST. Consequently they'll have to go to bed an hour earlier. Exactly the opposite a night dweller would want.
Personally I don't care if we abandon DST. I live in the Netherlands, which is quite northerly. We get about 8 hours of sunlight in winter, and 16 hours in summer. But please for the love of god don't establish DST year round. I'd like to have the sun up before 9:30 please.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Why doesn't the EU wait until after March 29th to take the vote? UK won't be part of the EU then. It would be weird though having to change your watches going from Southern Ireland to Northern Ireland though, should the UK and Eire adopt different approaches.
return 0; }
by the way the ECHR is not a EU institution, its member states are :
Albania
Andorra
Armenia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Georgia
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Moldova
Monaco
Montenegro
Netherlands
North Macedonia1
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
San Marino
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom
But the survey was not representative, with 3 million of the 4.6 million votes coming from Germany. This led to diplomats from smaller EU countries complaining behind closed doors that the European Commission wanted to impose German will on the other states through sheer populism.
I'm pretty sure we at Slashdot called it. When you make a decision based on a marketing campaign of a small vocal minority don't expect a smooth change.
I guess changing clocks is too hard. When I thought some more about it, the only clocks I actually needed to change were the mechanical clock in the living room and the dumb stove and dumb microwave in the kitchen.
It seems like everything else knows when to spring forward or fall behind. cell phones, tablets, TVs, computers...
The things I hate most about DST is when I wake up at 7;00 and can't figure out if it's AM or PM since the alarm clock can't do 24 hour time.
That and the dark drive to work, to the windowless cube farm, and the dark drive home 9-10 hours later.
I'm not sure if you're joking or if you don't understand how this works.
If we're only removing one of the two the clock will move forwards (or backwards) an hour in each of the 5 years, resulting in watches being completly out of sync with the sun, the rest of the world and, well, everything.
when i heard the news i was all excited, that excitement lasted for a few seconds when they said that each country was going to able to choose what they'll want to do for themselves.
really? that is not what we wanted.
now you'll have countries that will not have dst, other will still have it, some will use a different dst then what they have now, and there are even some countries thinking about having something in the middle. and all of these could be neighbouring countries, you could travel from denmark to italy and cross 6 different time zones. that is actaully worse then having an EU wide dst, at least that was something everybody used.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I wonder how many citizens consider their country being a "state" in the EU. I know it is the politician's wet dream, and something they lied about would not happen, to have the United States of Europe.
L'Idiot
But we even discussed the poll here!
https://m.slashdot.org/story/343092
I know it's common to not read TFA, but there was a link to the poll in TFS!
Mandatory EU-wide coordination of DST will end. Countries can then choose whether they want it or not. The principle is called 'subsidiarity' and there's no reason why Leavers or Remainers should be offended.
The "proper" time standard is thus the one which puts noon as close as possible to when the sun is directly overhead. You can't argue that you'd like to have the sun up before 9:30 because that phenomenon is specific to your latitude (and to a lesser extent, how far east/west you are in your time zone). It's silly to require the rest of the world to adopt a time standard which works best for your latitude.
The "correct" solution is not to change the clocks, but for different locations to change their business hours throughout the year.
That keeps sunrise a couple hours before the start of business hours year-round, regardless of your latitude or time of year. Each latitude can tweak this forward or back depending on their preference (higher latitudes will probably prefer start of business to be right around sunrise in winter instead of 2 hours after, to maximize use of the short day). And each business can tweak this forward or back depending on their needs (e.g. businesses delivering food to restaurants will probably want to start a couple hours before sunrise instead of a couple hours after).
Trying to do this by adjusting everyone's clock by the same amount regardless of their latitude is insane.
Well, to be fair, we would sync with the rest of the world. A different part of the world every year, sure, but still.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You fascists.
Please, let us follow suit in the US. So tired of it.
I can't even list all the annoyances. Here's one I haven't thrown out there before, I get to have the sun in my eyes for a week or two while driving to work, not once, but twice! Once because the days got longer, and again because we fiddled with the clock.
Yay, the kids aren't in the dark at the bus stop anymo ...oh, wait, yeah, they are. Again.
I'd prefer it if noon was based on the sun, but the Chicago area (where I've lived most of my life) is on the eastern end of the timezone, so DST or not should be 30 minutes of one or half an hour of the other. However, just the opposite of the parent AC, I'd prefer it to be dark when I leave for work, so I can sleep on the train without the sun in my eyes; plus I like it when there's still sun out when I get home. So I'd vote for year-round DST, but only if I don't get a choice to base the local clock closer to solar noon.
I don't know where the article is getting its information from but there is a strong call to end changing and sticking to the summertime schedule of GMT+1 to give light longer in the evenings. It even has strong support in Parliament.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
There's nothing that says timezones HAVE to be exactly one hour apart, and several countries already have timezones that split the difference and lie on a half-hour boundary instead.
30 minutes is enough to give most of the benefit of extra daylight in the evening after work, while reducing the hardship of early-morning darkness to a couple of weeks.
Guaranteed, if the EU splits the difference for Central European time, the US will do the same thing within a year or two (and vice-versa).
Most people don't want to give up summer evening daylight, and a lot of people don't want 9am dawn, but everyone hates clock-changing. Splitting the difference between summer and winter time is a sensible compromise.
Every time this topic comes up, there's belly-aching about which time should be the permanent time. Late summer brightness or early summer brightness. Here's the thing-- people will complain at decreasing levels as time goes on. You'll get used to whatever change happens.
Right now it is unclear if this ever will become reality. If they change it then this might be in 2021 at the soonest. A lot of bullshit can happen until then.
1) You are anonymous so don't have the balls to insult someone directly
2) For many countries, EU Directives are treated as suggestions and basically ignored.
3) The UK and other advanced economies had standards long before the EU.
4) You are a paid Brussels shill and I claim my five euros.
somebody has the sense to end this useless barnacle of an abomination — good riddance!