Europe goes into daylight saving time despite controversy – DW – 03/30/2025
www.dw.com
Most Europeans woke up on Sunday clocks that jumped forward by one hour. The twice-annual time change has long been contentious and was even voted against in an EU open consultation back in 2018.

Summary

Most European countries moved clocks forward one hour on Sunday, marking the start of daylight saving time (DST), a practice increasingly criticized.

Originally introduced during World War I to conserve energy, DST returned during the 1970s oil crisis and now shifts Central European Time to Central European Summer Time.

Despite a 2018 EU consultation where 84% of nearly 4 million respondents supported abolishing DST, implementation stalled due to member state disagreement.

Poland, currently holding the EU presidency, plans informal consultations to revisit the issue amid broader geopolitical priorities.

  • randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
    61·
    1 year ago

    To people thinking of enforcing UTC around the globe:

    obligatory: https://qntm.org/abolish

    Before I read this article, I also thought it would be a great idea to get rid of timezones entirely and just use UTC for everything. To quote from the link,

    Abolishing time zones brings many benefits, I hope. It also:

    • causes the question “What time is it there?” to be useless/unanswerable
    • necessitates significant changes to the way in which normal people talk about time
    • convolutes timetables, where present
    • means “days” (of the week) are no longer the same as “days”
    • complicates both secular and religious law
    • is a staggering inconvenience for a minimum of five billion people
    • makes it near-impossible to reason about time in other parts of the world
    • does not mean everybody gets up at the same time, goes to work at the same time, or goes to bed at the same time
    • is not simpler.

    As long as humans live in more than one part of the world, solar time is always going to be subjective. Abolishing time zones only exacerbates this problem.

    (copied from one of my 9-month old comments)

    • frank@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I mean the best refute of it I’ve ever heard is that the date changes in the middle of the day, and that sounds miserable

    • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      UTC all around the world is a completely different thing than UTC (or UTC+1) all over Europe. China also spans just over three natural timezones and they get by just fine with one.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        they get by just fine with one.

        China spans five geographic time zones and it does cause some pain to those living far away from Beijing. It’s not a great system.

        • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Because Beijing should be using Chongqing time, yes, then the offset of clock noon to natural noon would be at most something like ±1.5 hours.

    • peoplebeproblems@midwest.socialEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      I advocate for UTC everywhere. So far I’m always dismissed as a joke.

      Because time doesn’t really matter in any of those situations.

      You still need to know all that information.