HAVE YOUR SAY OVER SWITCHING TO SUMMERTIME

Cyprus Mail - article by Evie Andreou 9 August 2018

EU citizens have a few more days to express their opinion on keeping the current arrangements as regards switching between summer and wintertime for all member states or abolishing them.

The EU wide poll, launched on July 4, ends on August 16.

The European Commission said it wants to gather the views of European citizens, stakeholders and member states on possible changes to the current summertime arrangements.

The move comes after a number of requests from citizens but also the European Parliament and some EU member states. “The Commission has decided to investigate the functioning of the current EU summertime arrangements and to assess whether or not they should be changed,” an EU statement said.

The EC launched an online questionnaire, accessible in all official EU languages except Irish. Replies may be submitted in any EU language, but participants are encouraged to answer as much as possible in English.

Respondents are asked whether they would like the bloc to keep the current arrangements switching between summer and wintertime, or abolishing it for all EU member states.

In all member states clocks are put forward by one hour on the last Sunday in March and back again on the last Sunday in October.

They can also state whether they would prefer permanent summertime or permanent wintertime.

The majority of the EU member states, the announcement said, have a long tradition of summertime arrangements, most of which date back as far as the First and Second World Wars or to the oil crisis in the 1970s.

At the time, summertime arrangements were mainly designed to save energy. “However, there have also been other motivations, such as road safety, increasing leisure opportunities stemming from longer daylight during evenings or simply to align national practices to those of neighbours or main trading partners.”

A number of studies have been carried out over the years to assess EU summertime arrangements.

Available evidence, it said, indicates that allowing uncoordinated time changes between member states would be detrimental to the internal market due to higher costs to cross-border trade, inconveniences in transport, communications and travel, and lower productivity in the internal market for goods and services.

As regards energy, it said, “despite having been one of the main drivers of the current arrangements, research indicates that the overall energy savings effect of summertime is marginal.”

It added that summertime arrangements are estimated to generate positive effects linked to more outdoor leisure activities but on the other hand, chronobiologic research findings suggest that the effect on the human biorhythm may be more severe than previously thought. The evidence on overall health impacts, however, concerning the balance of the assumed positive versus negative effects, remains inconclusive.

In response to a European Parliament resolution, the Commission has committed to assess the two main policy alternatives; keeping the current EU summertime arrangements as set out in Directive 2000/84/EC, or discontinuing the current bi-annual time changes for all member states and prohibiting periodic switches.

This, it said, would not affect the choice of time zone, and it would ultimately remain each member state’s decision whether to go for permanent summer or wintertime (or a different time).

The questionnaire can be found at: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/2018-summertime-arrangements?survey…https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/2018-summertime-arrangements?survey…