European Parliament in Brussels End of daylight saving time probably not before 2021
Brussels · Ending daylight saving time will not come as quickly as originally planned. A European Parliament committee voted on Monday to eliminating the twice-yearly time change not until 2021.
It could be that early Sunday morning, March 28 of 2021 is the last time we have to change our clocks. For EU countries that have opted for summer time, that would be the final change to summer time. A European Parliament committee on Monday gave a green light to eliminating the twice-yearly clock change but not until 2021. Previous to that, other groups of parliament had pleaded for the change in 2020. A decision from the entire parliament is expected in a few days. Only then will the member states want to pin down their positions in the relevant Council of Ministers. So far, the Council has been talking about "2021 at the earliest”.
But the real challenge still lies ahead for the member states. "We should avoid having too many different time zones in the European Union," warned Peter Liese, CDU politician for Europe, who played a key role in the scrapping the time change. So far, the EU has had three standard time zones: With 16 other countries, Germany belongs to the largest group, in which Central European Time applies.
Ireland, Portugal and Great Britain use Western European time and are one hour behind Germany. Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland and Greece as well as the three Baltic states plus Romania and Cyprus belong to the Eastern European time zone - they are one hour ahead.
Last summer, more than 4 million EU citizens took part in an online survey initiated by the European Commission and 84 percent were against putting clocks forward in spring and back in autumn every year. When the EU Commission presented its draft legislation to eliminate the time change, it wanted to leave it to member states to decide which time zone would be suitable. The only requirement: no chaos please.
But at this point it is not yet clear when and within what framework the representatives of the 28 governments will be able to or should agree. Perhaps even the heads of state and government themselves would have to get involved - it would probably be a summit meeting that would receive unprecedented public attention.
(Orig. text: Detlef Drewes / Translation: ck)
