
European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings - mattjaynes
https://www.dw.com/en/european-parliament-set-to-end-eu-wide-daylight-savings/a-47775317
======
sambucini
I work in energy trading in Europe and for us this is a blessing. Of course we
store our time series TZ aware, but many less professional small utilities or
other market participants (incl. Grid operators) who e.g. Order power on
hourly resolution with tz-unaware excel spreadsheets via email are a nightmare
as each participants treatment of double or missing hours is different and
requires manual processing.

~~~
jopsen
Why don't you just make a system that the clients must enter data through?
Instead of accepting spreadsheets...

But, yes, I can imagine this is a nightmare..

~~~
flurdy
Supply and demand. I would guess the clients can just go "no" and you either
loose the electricity they provide or allow spreadsheets.

~~~
silvester23
Working in the same sector, I can confirm this. We try to offer pretty much
any half-way reasonable interface to our clients for that exact reason, be it
spreadsheets or csv via mail or SFTP, REST APIs or a web interface.

------
thomasedwards
So many people, including a lot of comments here, seem to think that it’s
designed around the winter. It’s not, it’s to move an hour of sunlight from
the start of the day (say, 4am) to the end of the day (say, 9pm) so that you
use less energy in the summer (hence the ‘savings’), and then you can enjoy
that rather than being asleep.

Moving to summer time year-round means that the mornings in the winter will be
darker. I like having a bit of daylight in the mornings in the winter, and
I’ll miss it when it’s gone. As I’m sure a lot of people will when they
realise that getting ‘rid’ of it makes the winter worse, not the summer
better.

~~~
rsik
So just change the hours you work during the Winter! Why do you have to modify
the actual clock that everyone else uses to do that?

~~~
athenot
That would be great but convincing School Boards of that would be a non-
trivial task.

~~~
rsik
DST causes trauma for people with bipolar disorder, heart attacks go up, etc.
Also, on a selfish note, it's irritating to program around.

DST is a legislative solution to the problem of getting everyone to change
scheduling. So why not use legislation to get those school boards to change
scheduling directly?

~~~
rsik
downvotes instead of rational arguments? On HN? Either pigs are flying or it's
Wednesday again.

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

Also, going on about downvoting breaks the site guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

------
BurritoAlPastor
The graphic would seem to indicate that the UK and Portugal observe a time
zone of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC±0). This is nonsense, of course; UTC
is not a time zone. I believe the UK observes GMT (UTC±0) and Portugal uses
Western European Time (UTC±0).

It's also worth looking up the story of why Coordinated Universal Time is
abbreviated UTC and not CUT, if you haven't heard it. Time zones are great.

~~~
timthorn
> I believe the UK observes GMT (UTC±0)

That's correct, with BST in the Summer. It can get confusing when working with
people from different countries who aren't aware of BST and who schedule
meetings explicitly in GMT, thinking that it automatically includes daylight
saving.

~~~
StavrosK
In my experience, it gets more confusing for English people who schedule
meetings in GMT in the summer and then are an hour late.

~~~
macca321
It's also a problem for software engineers in the UK, for whom 6 months of the
year utc and local time are the same, resulting in people not knowing the
difference. In the rest of the world it's bleedin obvious.

A downside to inventing time I guess ;)

~~~
jimworm
The two times a year when you find out which new tests were written to use
local time instead of UTC.

------
diminish
The `daylight saving` purpose is intriguing.

I'm very curious why people long time ago, decided to change clocks, instead
of work/school start and finish times. Like we start in April at 8:00 am, and
in November, at 9:00.

~~~
pmontra
I believe the reason is that it costs less to move the hands of a clock than
to print and distribute new timetables for trains, buses, etc.

That could cost less today because we use much less paper, but updating web
sites and databases is still a large amount of work. It's far easier to
communicate to all the country when to move the clock and keep everything else
the same.

~~~
mar77i
It actually costs in an entirely different way, when you screw with
everybody's sleeping schedules, cause accidents with wildlife getting
surprised by brisk changes in traffic peaks. Personally, I never dealt well
with the change, either, so this means I have one less thing to worry about in
pollinosis season. Good riddance.

~~~
wil421
Do you have any credible sources that say wildlife is affected in any way by
daylight savings?

~~~
Verdex
I don't have a source, but my understanding was that deer tend to learn when
it's safe to cross the road. When all of a sudden people change their driving
habits by an hour, deer start to get hit by cars that they didn't expect to be
there.

------
spiderfarmer
Lets also try and spread working times from (mostly) 9-5 to 6-2, 7-3, 8-4, 9-5
and 10-6 so we can solve the traffic congestion problem, all while enabling
people to work when they work best.

~~~
athenot
I would love this. But it seems what pegs everyone to the same schedule is
uniform school hours for K-12.

~~~
andai
There's a lot of research lately indicating that the current school hours are
harmful and should be adjusted.

------
hcnews
Someday US will get this too! Right after the metric system.

Seriously speaking: I wish US gets rid of the clock change (one way or the
other).

~~~
ghaff
It's pretty much up to individual states.

~~~
sverige
Except there is federal law on this that affects their decisions. [0]

I wish we would at least call it "summer time" instead of the lie "daylight
savings time." There's no daylight "saved."

[0]
[http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/usc.html](http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/usc.html)

~~~
vinay427
It affects their decisions in some nominal capacity, but it is still up to the
states and territories. Federal laws don't have the authority to supersede
local laws whenever they want.

"As of 2014, the following states and territories are not observing DST:
Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.[7]"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_Un...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States#1966%E2%80%931972:_Federal_standard_established)

~~~
plopz
I thought that winter time was the default and summer time was opt-in by the
states. But that both California and Florida when seeking to change to summer
time all year round had to get approval from congress.

------
lsh
> mandated EU-wide summer time has only existed since 2002

and this repeal only repeals the mandatory adherence to daylight savings.
Their next problem is consistency and coordination of the removal of DST among
member states. And the Germans seem to be dominating the vote as well, so the
really hard work in negotiating with others to remove their DST is the real
barrier.

~~~
Spearchucker
" _And the Germans seem to be dominating the vote..._ "

On what basis are Germany dominating the vote? They cannot. No EU member state
can dominate a vote. Germany could at best lobby other member states, as other
member states can (and do) lobby Germany.

~~~
SyneRyder
_> On what basis are Germany dominating the vote?_

The initial EU online public vote was dominated by German voters. There were
4.6 Million votes, of which 3 Million came from Germany [1]:

 _" More than 80 percent of respondents to the largest online survey in EU
history are in favor of abolishing changing the clocks in summer and winter,
EU sources reported Wednesday. Around 4.6 million people took part in the
survey, which ran between July 4 and August 16. Three million of the
respondents were from Germany._

And from the EU Commission report [2]:

 _" It should be noted that the largest amount of responses came from Germany
(70% of all replies), which has a statistical influence on the average
results._"

That said, from section 3.2 of the EU Commission report, Cyprus & Greece were
the only two countries where citizens voted to keep daylight saving.

[1] [https://www.dw.com/en/eu-citizens-feel-times-up-for-
changing...](https://www.dw.com/en/eu-citizens-feel-times-up-for-changing-
clocks/a-45263664)

[2] [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52018SC0406)

~~~
imarg
Edit: I think I misunderstood your comment. I thought you meant Greece and
Cyprus prefer to keep summer time for ever. Whereas you probably meant that
Greece and Cyprus wanted to keep changing the clocks.

Anyway I leave my initial comment below.

I think you read that wrong. You should look at section 3.5.

"The highest share of respondents in favour of “permanent summertime” is in
Portugal (79%), Cyprus (73%) and Poland (72%)."

------
bnegreve
Frankly, I like daylight savings. It contributes to reduce the difference
between the sun time and my time.

I wake up more or less when the sun raises and then go to work. Now if I keep
doing that I'm going to show up either too late in the winter or too early in
the summer.

~~~
mabbo
So you do you- just don't force the complexity of your life on the rest of us.

We can contribute a measurable number of deaths every year to DST. It's a
disaster.

~~~
bnegreve
I say it's natural to wake up when the sun raises, you say it's natural to
stick to the same hour all year long.

I'm not forcing anything anymore than you do.

~~~
magduf
No one is forcing you to wake up at any particular time. If you want to wake
up when the sun rises, you can do that. You don't need to control everyone's
clock to do that.

~~~
bnegreve
Employers do force their employees to show up at a particular time.

~~~
magduf
No, they don't force that at all. You're free to find another job with hours
you prefer, or try to get your boss to let you work different hours. If all
your coworkers don't like the hours, you have a better chance of getting the
management to change the working hours. If you're the one weirdo who wants
different hours, then maybe you shouldn't be trying to get everyone else to do
things to your liking.

------
Tharkun
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Getting rid of DST sounds like
a good thing. Not messing time is patently good. But a bunch of countries on
the western side of the EU ought to be on GMT instead of GMT+1. And
appparently a majority of people want to make that worse, by making a
permanent switch to GMT+2.

This will make for fun winters, with the sun rising long after rush hour. This
is stupid.

~~~
tirpen
There is no natural law stipulating when rush hour happens or when buissness
hours should be though.

Shops will just start to open at 10 instead of 9 and workdays will start at 9
instead of 8 in those areas where this is a problem.

~~~
tobyhinloopen
You're forgetting some "laws". Let me list them in order of priority:

1\. Business hours must be kept in sync with the important countries next to
them. This is important for communications between companies. When business
hours are off by 1 hour, there is 1 hour less to communicate with your
neighbour countries at business hours. That is 12.5% of the business day you
cannot reliably contact another company in another country.

2\. The clock must be equal to these important countries to not make mistakes
when setting appointments.

3\. Business people with kids have to bring their kids to school before
business hours start. Schools start before business hours, about 30 minutes up
to an hour earlier.

4\. Shops open relative to business hours.

The reality is that north-west EU will do whatever Germany does. Germany wants
GMT+2. That means that all countries west of Germany that follow Germany will
have post 10 o'clock sunrises in winter, 2 hours after people get out to bring
their kids to school & go to work.

~~~
jcelerier
> The reality is that north-west EU will do whatever Germany does. Germany
> wants GMT+2. That means that all countries west of Germany that follow
> Germany will have post 10 o'clock sunrises in winter, 2 hours after people
> get out to bring their kids to school & go to work.

As a french I don't see the problem with that, I'd much rather have more
sunlight in the evening when I can actually go out and do stuff

~~~
tobyhinloopen
Maybe you don't, but it really messes with your biological rhythm to get up
before dark. If you get up, go to work and start your job all while it's dark
outside, it is really hard to get going and not getting depressed in the long
term.

Maybe not for you, but for many it will be.

The only daylight people will experience is when they leave their job. That's
rough.

------
henrikschroder
In before "Let's all switch to UTC to solve this problem once and for all!"

Anyway, it's so weird to me that daylight savings is such a new concept, it
didn't exist where I was born when I was born, but it feels like a thing that
ought to have existed for a hundred years at least.

And yet, despite it being so new, people are actually defending it?
Mindboggling.

~~~
function_seven
Whenever someone advocates for UTC being the wall clock time all over the
world, I think of Jason Mendoza from _The Good Place_ :

> Anytime I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I
> had a different problem!

~~~
mac01021
By why is UTC a Molotov cocktail?

~~~
function_seven
This site does a good job of explaining:

[https://qntm.org/abolish](https://qntm.org/abolish)

For me the biggest headache would be the date changing in th middle of the
day.

~~~
henrikschroder
"Excuse me, does your workweek start on Sunday/Monday or on Monday/Tuesday?"

Yay, everyone is now on the same time, too bad the concept of weekdays got
completely broken in the process...

------
kzrdude
I really hope this doesn't happen. I don't want to have darker mornings than
they already are. Daylight in the morning is important to wake you up and to
adjust your circadian rhythm.

~~~
jve
Sorry, but this so much differs depending on which month/day it is. My
"biological clock" is reliably and wakes me up more or less the same time,
however comparing winter/summer has a huge difference - having total darkness
or sun heating your room. Regardless of DST.

------
conradfr
I have a side project that displays French radios' schedules that is basically
wrong two days per year because of DST so I guess thanks the EU for fixing it.

As a citizen though I don't really have an opinion, except that I want the
longest sun possible during the summer evenings ...

------
ggm
A change which may be rational closer to the equator, but which makes less
sense in Edinburgh or further north surely?

~~~
pmontra
Actually the closer you get to the poles the less you benefit from DST. At the
poles you get 6 months of daylight and 6 months of night no matter what. The
same at the equator, 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night (this doesn't
take into account the inclination of Earth's axis, but you got the idea.) The
places that benefit most from DST are the ones in between, especially around
45 degrees latitude.

Then there are cultural factors, like those countries that like to spend their
day time between 9 AM to midnight. It's easier to change the time on the clock
than the minds of millions of people. For example, in my country there is a
saying that only hens have dinner at 6 PM. It's not socially acceptable to get
into a restaurant before 8 PM, friends will laugh at you if you suggest doing
so. It's best to have dinner 9 or 10 PM, unless you're a tourist with
different habits.

~~~
ggm
In Edinburgh, during the miners strike in the seventies we went to double
summer time. In winter when it's bloody dark in the morning I found it
credible a time shift helps. In summer when it's 11pm and bright outsides I
find it credible a time shift helps.

I think your 'less useful the further to the pole you are' line may be the
inside the arctic circle story. I definitely think summertime made sense in
the Edinburgh from personal experience. I now live in Brisbane around 600k of
the tropic of Capricorn and it makes no sense at all, except economically
because the southern state neighbour (NSW) does summertime, as does Victoria
and Tasmania both significantly further towards the pole.

~~~
nemetroid
I grew up in northern Sweden. I always found that summers are so bright it
doesn't matter either way.

> In winter when it's bloody dark in the morning I found it credible a time
> shift helps.

Winter time is standard time anyway, and wouldn't be affected by this change.

> In summer when it's 11pm and bright outsides I find it credible a time shift
> helps.

DST pushes the clock ahead of the sun and makes it bright _longer_ into the
night.

------
freecodyx
Here in Morocco, it was made permanent starting this year, so instead of being
GMT we are GMT+1 all year round,

Except, this decision was made brutally without any prior discussion or vote,

~~~
runarberg
Huh, that means Iceland can no longer set our timezones to Casablanca. A few
years back, Atlantic/Reykjavík was never an option when selecting timezone, so
we would always go with Casablanca.

------
CalRobert
Whatever we do I hope it syncs with the US, because 9 AM SF/5 PM Dublin
meetings are a LOT nicer than 8AM SF/5PM Dublin or 9 AM SF/6PM Dublin

------
widforss
Is the full colorization of Cyprus a result of a political statement or just
ignorance?

~~~
int_19h
EU does not officially recognize Northern Cyprus.

~~~
oblio
Nobody recognizes Northern Cyprus.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cyprus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Cyprus):

> No nation other than Turkey has officially recognised Northern Cyprus as a
> sovereign state. The United Nations recognises it as territory of the
> Republic of Cyprus under Turkish occupation.

------
hFAUST
Most of the people that I hear complaining about it are old people and by that
I mean people who are retired and time only tells them if it's the time for
their favorite TV drama or medicine. IMHO daylight saving time helps both
mentally (less gloomy dark winter) and energy-wise.

~~~
blattimwind
If I observe regular office hours, it's dark when I go to work, and it's dark
again when I get out of work. One hour either way would make barely any
difference. Don't see the point. And in the middle of the summer the sun
raises around 4:00. So, yeah.

------
apexalpha
Time for NL to detach from Germany then if they go to permanent summertime.
That time is the natural time for St Petersburg. It'll be weird to have
different time between us but otherwise it's just too off for us.

------
ptah
UK's insistence on keeping daylight savings is disappointing to say the least

------
themistokl1k
I FEEL BAD FOR YOU TIME LIB MAINTAINERS

------
Iv
Finally!

Let more people see the light!

------
tumetab1
Title improvement suggestion: EU Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight
savings

IMHO, EU institutions should always be referred as such instead as related to
a continent, i.e., "EU Parliament" is more correct than "European Parliament"

~~~
esolyt
Except there is no such thing as the EU Parliament. It is called the European
Parliament:

[https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-
bodie...](https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-
bodies/european-parliament_en)

~~~
sonnyblarney
It's called 'European Parliament' but it's not the Parliament of Europe
because EU is not Europe.

Like the MLB 'World Series' ... not quite.

------
_Microft
All of that because of a stupid survey in which the ones who wanted to abolish
daylight saving time were overrepresented because it gave them a platform
while the majority who doesn't, didn't bother to make themselves heard.

That's not quite _Brexit-level_ but maybe _Swiss immigration referendum_
-stupidity.

~~~
bad_user
Why do you think abolishing the daylight savings change is bad?

Personally I think it’s a super awesome move.

And note that no matter what you have against it, disrupting the sleep of
billions of people twice per year has caused depression and cardiovascular
issues which shouldn’t be taken lightly.

So what’s the issue in everyone switching to the summer time for the whole
year?

~~~
mcjiggerlog
Because in the UK and Spain (the countries I have lived in) the sun would not
rise until nearly 10am in winter.

Lots of people think this change is a good idea simply because they assume
they would stick to the time zone that they think is best. When the millions
of people who want permanent summertime realise their government will most
likely choose permanent winter time then it might not seem like such a great
idea any more.

This decision has been made way too fast and without proper investigation.
Yes, there may be side effects of changing clocks twice per year, but how do
they compare to the effects of having less light in the morning in winter or
less light in the evening in summer?

~~~
bad_user
> _Yes, there may be side effects of changing clocks twice per year, but how
> do they compare to the effects of having less light in the morning in winter
> or less light in the evening in summer?_

In think the effects you’re mentioning are insignificant compared with having
your sleep schedule disrupted twice per year. People have literally died due
to it.

Getting rid of DST also simplifies business. Did you know that European
countries do not switch at the same time as the US?

Daylight saving times are a clusterfuck.

~~~
mcjiggerlog
> In think the effects you’re mentioning are insignificant compared with
> having your sleep schedule disrupted twice per year. People have literally
> died due to it.

That's quite the claim to make. If changing the clocks has a negative effect,
it last at most a few days. Getting the timezone wrong for the whole of winter
/ summer is an effect that lasts months.

~~~
bad_user
You're underestimating the effect.

Do some reading on the body's circadian rhythm. Every cell in our body is
tuned to it and disrupting it has serious consequences.

You may not feel it because you're probably young and healthy. Give it another
decade or two.

