If you’re among those reading this in Europe, you’ll no doubt have noticed that time is not standing still; rather, it is moving ahead by leaps and bounds—or at least by one hour this morning.
Yes, Daylight Time or Summer Time has come again despite a long-standing plan by European Union officials to end the twice-a-year leap into the future and then back again. Despite its approval in a public consultation in 2018 and steps and by the European Commission and Parliament in 2019, the measure has stalled, for the time being. Yes, intended pun.
Part of the delay has been blamed on the arrival of the pandemic, but even before that, still in 2019, the European Council, where each country has a vote, said it needed an ‘impact assessment’ before it could make a final decision. And that’s where it stands.
Will the clock start ticking again on a decision? That’s not really clear. Support for the measure is weak in sunnier southern climes—in Cyprus, Greece and Malta, the public consultation’s results were negative—and there was disagreement among countries over whether daylight time should be eliminated or should be the permanent year-round time.
Plans for year-round time have hit a similar roadblock in the U.S.; in March 2022, a bill for permanent daylight time passed the U.S. Senate, but wasn’t acted on by the House of Representatives. The bill was re-introduced in the Senate earlier this month by a bi-partisan group of Senators, but its fate is uncertain..
