On September 14, European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc announced that beginning in October 2019, the EU will no longer change its clocks for daylight savings. EU countries will have until April to decide whether they will remain on summer or winter time.
It appears that many Europeans are supportive of this change. A recent survey of Europe revealed that 84% of the 4.6 million respondents supported ending daylight savings time in the EU.
“The people want this, we will do this,” President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said to German public broadcaster ZDF. However, critics say that the survey is not representative of the entire EU, as the majority of responses came from Germany and Austria.
While daylight savings was once used as a means to conserve energy, many believe that daylights savings time is no longer necessary due to advances in energy-saving technology. “We are clearly headed toward smart cities, smart buildings and smart solutions which will bring much more savings than changes of the clock,” Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said.
One “smart city” that Sefcovic described includes Santander, a small port city on the coast of Spain. According to Deutsche Welle, a German public broadcast company, sensors planted in the Santander dim street lighten when people aren’t present, saving the city “about 25 percent on electricity bills.” With these technological advances, many believe that changing the clocks for daylight savings is unnecessary in present day.
A major fault of the seasonal clock changes is that it brings about certain health risks. Many people have reported sleep disruptions and reduced concentration as a result of the time changes. A 2012 study by Martin Young at the University of Alabama at Birmingham corroborated these reports, and found that the risk of a heart attack “increases by 10 percent on the Monday and Tuesday after moving the clocks ahead an hour each spring.”
Critics of the EU’s decision argue that daylight savings time benefits public safety and the economy. They also argue that the proposal presented by the Commission lacks clarity, places member countries on a difficult to meet timeline, and has the potential to throw the EU into a disarray of time zones. One Western European diplomat told Politico,“The Commission is dumping an incomplete piece of legislation on the lap of countries and saying, ‘We’ve done our job, now you do yours.’”
EU law currently requires that all 28 member countries adjust their clocks for daylight savings. This proposal to end the practice would require approval from the 28 national governments and each country’s Member of the European Parliament (MEP) to become law.
The EU joins a growing list of countries opting out of changing their clocks, including Russia, Turkey, Belarus, and Iceland. In Russia, the decision to stop the changing of the clocks was originally popular, but a 2013 survey showed that “less than a third of Russians wanted to keep the clocks forward all year” according to BBC.
Russia has also experienced an increase in early morning automobile crashes, which many Members of Parliament believe was caused by the decision to stop changing the clocks. It is unknown whether the decision to stop observing daylight savings in Europe will have similar results. The EU’s changing of the clocks signals a global reckoning with daylights savings time which will affect the world for years to come.
Article by MoCo Student staff writer Nene Narh-Mensah of Montgomery Blair High School