EU Parliament Votes to Stop Clock Changes

(Bloomberg) -- The European Parliament advanced a plan to end the seasonal clock change in Europe, shifting the spotlight onto national governments as they wrestle with the initiative.

The European Union assembly voted on Tuesday to scrap as of 2021 the decades-old practice of capitalizing on natural daylight by putting clocks forward by 60 minutes between late March and late October.

Under the legislation approved by the 28-nation Parliament in Strasbourg, France, governments that want to be permanently on summertime would adjust their clocks for the final time on the last Sunday in March 2021. Those that opt for permanent wintertime would change their clocks for the final time on the last Sunday of October 2021.

While giving a fillip to a draft law proposed last year by the European Commission, the verdict by the EU Parliament risks being the only official word on the matter for many months because member countries are struggling to come up with their own positions.

The EU began to regulate daylight-saving time in the 1980s by harmonizing national practices. The goal was to prevent divergent approaches from undermining the European single market for transport, communications and commerce.

The notion of daylight-saving time is a lot older than that. The idea is attributed to a late British builder named William Willett, who wrote a 1907 pamphlet called “The Waste of Daylight,” and the practice was first instituted in 1916 by Germany and followed by other European countries and the U.S. to conserve energy for their World War I efforts, according to an EU Parliament study.

The October 2017 report says that, while daylight-saving time benefits the transport industry, helps outdoor leisure activities and reduces energy consumption, it is associated with disruptions to the human biorhythm.

The Brussels-based commission, the EU’s executive arm, rushed out the proposal in September to stop the seasonal clock change on the grounds the move would win plaudits from voters in the bloc’s legislative elections this May. Under the commission’s plan, now amended by the EU Parliament, the practice would have ended this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Stearns in Brussels at jstearns2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Nikos Chrysoloras

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