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CLOCKS ACROSS EUROPE are set to go forward at 1am on Sunday morning – four years after the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to abolish the twice-yearly time changes.
Since MEPs voted on the measure in 2019, progress on the abolition of daylight savings time has stalled due to a lack of consensus among EU member states.
Some of the blame has been attributed to a number of more pressing concerns including Brexit, Covid-19 and the invasion of Ukraine.
So, what’s the reason for the four-year delay and will we ever be free of seasonal time changes?
The question is: what’s become of the original proposal that was so popular at parliamentary level in 2019?
“It’s on the shelf,” says Ireland South MEP Deirdre Clune, who is among those in favour of adopting the proposal. She argues that the hour changes are both disruptive and have detrimental health effects, and says this is supported by research on the topic.
“It’s seen as a non-runner,” she said. “We were making great progress four years ago but at this point, there’s no movement on it. There’s still division among member countries.”
The original parliamentary vote, which was won 410 – 192, came after a poll conducted by the EU Commission in 2018 found that 84% of respondents said they wanted the clocks to stop changing.
One caveat to that result is that the German and Austrian responses dwarfed those of other countries, with 3.79% of the German population and 2.94% of Austrians taking part compared to just .24% of the Irish population.
After that 2019 vote passed, and a deadline of March 2021 was set, responsibility for negotiating the specifics passed to individual EU member states at Council level.
In order for the proposal to be adopted, it must receive a qualified majority of votes at the EU Council. To attain a qualified majority, the proposal must get the votes of 55% of member states, representing 65% of the EU population.
If the proposal was agreed upon at Council level, it would then need to get a majority in the EU Parliament.
However, Clune has little reason to believe that the issue will make any progress during this parliamentary term.
“I wouldn’t be hopeful this term,” she admitted.
The proposed change was particularly popular in Germany and Austria but Ireland is in a more complicated position due to the UK’s decision to leave the EU, and the border shared by the two countries.
If the Republic were to go ahead with the change and the UK did not follow suit, it would result in two different time zones on the island, the government has argued.
The Irish government therefore came out against discontinuing the practice back in 2019 after a public consultation poll conducted by Amárach found that 82% of 1,000 respondents said they would not be in favour of different time zones north and south of the border.
But Clune believes that the UK would have as much to gain as Ireland from adopting the change.
“It would be in the UK’s interest as well,” she argued. “Not just because of their neighbours but because of all the reasons the research has shown.”
Changing the clocks by an hour twice a year has become the subject of criticism from medical experts who argue that disrupting people’s body clocks comes with health risks, which include sleep disruption, irritability and reduced immune function.
For Clune, sticking permanently with summer time would be preferable to winter time, but either one would be better than the current system.
If summer time was to become the norm, it would mean darker mornings and brighter evenings, whereas winter time would have the opposite effect, resulting in a shortened evening stretch in the summer months.
All-year summer time was trialled in Ireland from 1969 to 1971, but it did not prove to be popular. One problem was that schoolchildren had to go school before the sun came up.
With permanent summer time, sunrise in Dublin would be after 9.30am for a whole month in the winter. It would be even later for counties like Sligo and Donegal.
In addition to these issues, other MEPs point to the simple inconveniences the changes bring, such as the impact on trade and transport schedules.
Swedish Green MEP Jokop Dalunde is one of them. He told The Journal:
“Abandoning current time arrangements would have a positive impact on the EU’s internal market, especially for the transport sector. Smoother cross-border trade, communications and travel are important benefits from discontinuing the seasonal time changes across Europe.”
The original arguments for seasonal clock changes were largely to do with energy conservation.
Daylight savings time was originally adopted in Europe by Germany in order to conserve coal during World War I. The practice was quickly copied in neighbouring states as well as in the UK and US.
After World War II, the system was largely abandoned in Europe until it was reintroduced in the 1970s in response to an oil shortage.
EU legislation on summer time was introduced in 1980, but it wasn’t until 2001 that a uniform system was put in place across the EU.
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Should do a poll, would be interesting to see the general consensus
@Jonny Spuds:
It is one of the most dismaying facts that you will ever come across and it involves a misadventure with timekeeping. People normally make correct judgments when they appreciate what is in front of them so, in this case, the Earth turns once every 24 hours creating the sunrise/noon/sunset cycle on which the DST adjustment is based and a thousand times in a thousand 24-hour days
In the late 17th century, they decided to bypass the Sun for each rotation in order to create a framework called RA/Dec or the clockwork solar system as it is known more commonly. In doing so they lost cause and effect between one rotation and one sunrise/noon/sunset cycle by creating a false narrative that one rotation of the Earth is not one 24-hour day.
” It is a fact not generally known that,owing to the difference between solar and sidereal time,the Earth rotates upon its axis once more often than there are [24 hour] days in the year” NASA
The 24-hour and Latitude/Longitude systems represent the foundations for DST, time zones and the GPS system. It is also why nobody can get to grips with DST and what it physically represents when a person moves the hand forward by an hour tomorrow.
I would work with anyone to undo the damage but that would involve those who understand what it means to lose basic planetary facts.
@Jonny Spuds: surprised they didn’t… the journal love a good poll
@Carrickview: is that not what a leap year corrects for?
Just leave it alone.
@Kieran Monaghan: 100%. Leave it alone. Stop changing it twice a year.
What would we talk about if there was no visible lengthening or shortening of days?
@Deirdre daly:??? Eh?
@Deirdre daly: the EU is pretty powerful if it can do that!
@Deirdre daly: weather, heat wave, cold spells.
@Deirdre daly: what planet do you live on?
@Deirdre daly: ask those who live near the equator how they manage!
Saying you prefer all year summer time followed straight away by arguments why that would be the worse option?!
Including the trial and sunrise only being at 09:30 for a month on the winter.
Oh no we will miss a bit of very late evening sun in the summer…
Don’t be fooled by the name, all year wintertime is the best option…
@Lars: to add, really gives me faith in these MEP’s. Preferring summer time without giving any argument why, probably because summertime sounds nicer. Can we get someone on this issue who actually knows what they’re talking about? Slim pickings I guess…
My main complaint with the clocks is how late they change in spring. How about shortening the amount of weeks spent in winter time similar to what they do in the USA.
We would just change the clocks in November and February each year.
Abolish winter time. I don’t understand how anyone could care about an extra hour of sunlight in the morning while we’re in the office doing work. The commute to work in the winter is always in darkness anyway. It’s always dark and dull and raining. The hour is much better spent trying to obtain a little bit of sunlight and salvage the day AFTER work.
@Tomo:
It was tried in the late 60s and didn’t work and an exceptionally poor piece of legislation was brought in 1971 called ‘ STANDARD TIME (AMENDMENT) ACT, 1971′
Standard time was supposed to represent DST while winter time represents normal time where the 24 hour day is anchored to 12 noon.
Readers have a genuine chance to undo damage because things were not thought through properly. I remember the real dark mornings back then as DST works against Ireland and especially those in the Western regions of the State.
The only thing most people can probably afford to save is daylight sayings time!
One major problem on our side to even consider changing, Charlie Flanagan.
The man sat in the Dept of Justice long enough for a pension and did nothing.
I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it one way or the other.
@Radioska: yes you will lose sleep over it. When the clocks go forward & you have to be up at, say, 7am you’ll have lost one hour’s sleep.
@Radioska: ?Or should that be the other way round?? Confused! Anyway, it is time to get rid of it. Damn nuisance.
@Radioska: ?Or should that be the other way round?? Confused! Anyway, it is time to get rid of it. It’s a nuisance.
@Richard Ahern: Err that was the gag Richie!
Nahh I love the long summer evenings, they should keep it. If anything they should add another one for May – July. I mean who really needs sunrise at 4:30 in the morning?
From 30 years of experience, I haven’t encountered anyone, at least those who will admit it openly, how the 24-hour cycle works with the sunrise/noon/sunset cycle to create DST.
The core fact is that the 24-hour cycle is normally anchored to noon within the sunrise/noon/sunset cycle where the length of time from sunrise to noon is the same as noon to sunset.
DST changes this relationship by borrowing one hour from sunrise/noon and transfers it to noon/sunset giving ‘longer evenings’.With graphics it is educational and entertaining.
The Earth turns once every 24 hours and a thousand times in a thousand 24 hour days.
For each degree longitude West, the Sun comes into view 4 minutes later so across an entire time zone of 15 degrees, a person on the entreme Western side sees the Sun come into view one hour later than a person on the Eastern side.
Dublin is 6.2° West of Greenwich so its local time was 25 minutes 21 seconds behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) using the fact that one degree is the same as 4 minutes clock time. After the 1916 rising, they consolidated the time in Dubllin with London when the telegraph emerged along with train timetables.
This part of the explanation should give people the appreciation why the slight jet lag effect of moving the clock forward by an hour is really an unecessary complaint as a person flying from Galway at longitude 9° West to London (GMT) on any given day will have nearly the same effect of 45 minutes difference similar to DST.
A correction.
A person flying from Galway ( 9° West) to Brussels ( 4° East) covers a longitude of 13°.
As the Earth turns at a rate of 4 minutes for each degree of longitude so Galway sees the Sun come into view 52 minutes later than Brussels, many people live with the same effects as DST every time they travel, even within the same time zone.
As long as the UK doesn’t change Ireland is unlikely to change. The UK are unlikely to change because the proposal came from the EU, however much the time change makes sense
Disorientating
The weather will still be sh*te no matter what time it is unfortunately!
What would happen if we didn’t keep in sync with our neighbours, could the Republic over the winter be out of by one hour with our DST (daylight saving time) friends in the North who would remain on British time?
Would it mean a train from Dublin to Belfast would appear to take only one hour twenty minutes and the return trip three hours twenty?
Would the Wolverhampton 1.30pm race run at 12.30 on TV here?
Our UK TV schedules times would all need subtraction?
This is how the 24-hour day and the Latitude/longitude were created and represent one rotation of our home planet in one 24-hour day.
If people use a water or sand clock to gauge the length of a noon-to-noon cycle, they will discover that no two cycles are the same and would give different amounts. If they took forty different samples they would see 40 different amounts.
If they combined those 40 samples and then divided them equally, they would get an average so this is where the average 24-hour day comes from along with equal hours, minutes and seconds as subdivisions of the 24 hour day.
As ‘average’ and ‘constant’ represent roughly the same terms, they could say the Earth rotates at a constant/average rate of 15 degrees per hour and 360 degrees in 24 hours so now our society has both the 24 hour and Latitude/Longitude systems.
DST is a flexible extension of this great human heritage and I hope readers enjoy it.
Some stretch
I blame chris Martin and his ancestors
have your say