EU uses daylight saving time as ballot issue in looming polls

On your marks, get set, stop!

That’s what the European Commission is urging with regard to seasonal clock changes.

The European Union’s executive arm wants EU countries to end the decades-old practice of capitalising on natural daylight by putting clocks forward by 60 minutes between late March and late October.

The legislative initiative, which commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced in a September 12 speech that included warnings about the dangers of populism, has a populist quality of its own. Juncker said seasonal time changes confuse European citizens and risk giving them a negative view of the EU in the run-up to European Parliament elections in May.

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

An 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.

When in February the EU Parliament asked the commission to conduct a “thorough assessment” of the legislation on summertime hours, Juncker’s team signalled lukewarm interest.

Then came a public consultation by the commission that it says produced more than 4.6 million responses -- the most ever in such an exercise. The answers from citizens and interested parties to the online questionnaire showed that 84% want to abolish seasonal clock changes, according to the commission. The EU has more than 500 million inhabitants.

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