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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