[renholder]

>Under the new legislation, governments opting to make summer time permanent would adjust their clocks for the last time on the last Sunday in March 2021.

For those choosing permanent standard time - also called winter time - the final clock change would be on the last Sunday of October 2021.

It's down to the member states to decide but I think most would prefer summer; save for maybe the Nordics, where the vast difference in the amount of daylight hours makes quite a significant difference.

Edit: Removed Iceland, since they froze their EU application.

[qalmakka]

I think countries on a blatantly wrong timezone such as Spain should take this opportunity to fix it. For instance, Spain could stay in UTC+1 all year round and go back in the same timezone as Portugal (which is going to certainly pick its summer time as its whole-year round timezone), thus eliminating the artificial shift everything has there (people eat lunch at 14 and dinner at 22, but these times match roughly with 13 and 21 in solar time).

[mcjiggerlog]

What exactly makes it "wrong"? I live in Spain and am perfectly happy with our current timezone and daylight saving. Staying on Winter time just means we get an hour of useless light long before anybody has woken up and take it away from the evening where it is far more appreciated.

The spanish public have already been shown to be massively in favor of staying on UTC+2 year-round, though this would mean that the sun wouldn't rise till 0930 in the depths of Winter.

I think once the government actually stops and takes a look at the repercussions of all options we will end up carrying on with the status quo.

[wongarsu]

I would argue Portugal is the one in the "wrong" timezone here.

If you want the sun to be at its high point at noon, Spain is obviously in the wrong time zone. But you see plenty of countries around the world choosing a slightly different timezone to facilitate trade and communication with some other country (or within itself, in the case of larger countries). With most other barriers to trade gone within the eurozone having to convert timezones is a significant inconvinience that (in the mind of many) outweighs having the sun in slightly the wrong place.

[allannienhuis]

Why would you want the sun to be at it's high point at noon?

Perhaps that has value in an agricultural society, but in today's world I'd much rather have more daylight in my leisure hours (evening) than my working hours.

[throw0101a]

> Why would you want the sun to be at it's high point at noon?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm

Nothing wrong with wanting sunlight during after-work activities, but are there biological consequences to all of this clock fiddling? (Not arguing for/against, just spit-balling a hypothesis.)

[tzs]

Biologically, the optimum would probably be more time fiddling, adjusting the clocks daily so that sunrise is at the same time every day. That would sync the clocks to one of the most important environmental factors that sets circadian rhythms.

Offhand, I can't think of any biological significance to noon. Noon's charms for timekeeping are technological.

1. It is easy for everyone in a given area to agree on noon. It happens with the Sun high in the sky, as opposed to sunrise which is obscured for many be trees, hills, and buildings.

2. The interval from noon to the next noon is constant [1]. The sunrise to sunrise interval varies considerably. Make a good mechanical clock and sync it to noon, and it can run a long time without getting too far out of sync. With time based on sunrise, you'd need to adjust the clock everyday, or make the clock more complicated to have it know about the variation.

[1] well...maybe not to people with very precise clocks, but it is constant as far as the needs of most people most of the time goes.

[logfromblammo]

Because that's the literal definition of local noon.

That has value in any society that values precise measurements of physical observations.

A purposefully inaccurate time zone is the equivalent of changing the length of the meter to make your daily commute less distance in the winter and more distance in the summer, or to make the meterstick longer all year just so you don't have to drive as many meters every day. It's ridiculous for distance, so why do we do it with time?

Business hours are almost entirely arbitrary anyway. Change them instead.

[oarsinsync]

Solar noon and local noon are different things, unfortunately.

Changing an offset isn't quite the same thing as changing the measure of a unit. Seconds, minutes and hours are not being adjusted as part of this. It would be more like starting to count from 1 metre instead of 0 metres to adjust the length of your commute.

> Business hours are almost entirely arbitrary anyway. Change them instead.

As it happens, a sibling comment has already pointed out that people have effectively done this. The time of day you eat lunch is arbitrary. So the lunch hour in Spain is 14:00 instead of 13:00, effectively resolving the 'wrong hour' issue.

[allannienhuis]

> because that's the literal definition of local noon.

Fair enough. I was (of course?) using the term to mean 12:00pm which I think is what most people think of when thinking of 'noon'.

Most people have approximately zero reasons to care about when the sun is at it's peak in the sky. Valuing precise measurements of physical observations doesn't make any difference to that in any way I'm aware of.

The sunrise and sunset times have much larger implications on our activities, so why not optimise for those times? I get that any solution won't be optimal for everyone, but it's reasonable to try to optimise for the majority of people where you can.

[qalmakka]

Spain was in GMT/UTC+0 until march 1940, when Franco's desire to align the country with Axis powers led him to change the clocks to CET. France was in GMT (as it is obvious given that its right below the UK) until the same year, when it was moved into German time following the Nazi invasion.

[jvzr]

Didn't know that. TIL. Thank you!

[stoolpigeon]

I feel that way here in Hungary. If the Eastern Europe time zone was called something else maybe we'd be in it. In the summer it doesn't matter but I'd kill for sunset an hour later in the winter.

[jwr]

Doesn't switching permanently to summer time fix that exact issue? (we suffer from the same problem in Poland)

[semi-extrinsic]

Even in the Nordics, eternal summer time would be preferrable for most people I think. It gives you more sunlight in the afternoon (if I'm not mistaken), when you actually have some free time to utilize that fact.

Who cares if it's light or dark in the morning, nobody is outside enjoying the weather at that time anyway, we're just trying to get everyone to school/work.

[Lunanne]

When I had to bike 6km to school in the Netherlands I was always very happy with the DST switch to wintertime because it meant biking in daylight a bit longer. In summertime sunrise would be at 9:48 am - I really think that is quite late.

[renholder]

In my county (Östergötland), the sun starts rising at 3am around this time of year; so, the concept of it being light or dark in the morning (or afternoon/night) isn't really a concern (overall).

In places like Kiruna, the sun will never set for about two weeks[0], during the summertime.

It's the amount of actual daytime during the winter that would principally matter - in the overall scheme of things.

[0] - https://www.kirunalapland.se/en/see-do/midnight-sun-2/

[semi-extrinsic]

FWIW I live a bit further north, at 63 degrees. In winter, at least december and january, we're in the state of "dark when you go to work, dark when you go home". However for the approx. two months between autumn equinox and end of november, and similar two months from end of january to spring equinox, having one more hour of daylight in the afternoon would be really really nice.

[oarsinsync]

I leave every morning at 5.30am. I literally see many others (but clearly a minority of peoples) doing the same.

It's much nicer doing that in daylight than in darkness, although it was also nice watching the sun rise during my morning swim a couple of months ago.

[posterboy]

Some people have tonwork outsides? Sun light also helps to wake up. So it's a trade off either way.

[qwsxyh]

Here in the UK permenant summer time would mean sunrise would be 9am during the depths of winter. That sounds like a great way to make more accidents (as everyone is now driving to work in the dark at 8am) and also make the seasonal depression worse.

[bunderbunder]

Southern Britain gets just over 8 hours of sunlight in the middle of winter.

Meaning you can choose between people driving to work with the sun up, or driving home from work with the sun up, but you can't have both. So I guess we'll just have to decide whether people would rather get hit by cars just after breakfast or just before dinner.

[tzs]

How does going to/from school work for children in Britain?

In the US, school generally school starts in the morning around the same time as or earlier than adult work time, so kids going to school are traveling at the same time as the work commute traffic.

The school day, though, is shorter than the work day so the kids come home while the adults are still at work, before the evening heavy traffic starts.

That introduces an asymmetry between the morning and evening work drives. The morning drive has a bunch of kids walking along the road. The evening drive does not.

This suggests that if you can only have one of those in daylight, it will probably be safer in the US to make that the morning one.

[qwsxyh]

Permenant winter time means that school hours in Winter are entirely contained within sunlight hours. Permenant summer time means that kids are walking to school in the dark. I'd rather not have them hit by drivers also driving in the dark.

[cr1895]

>kids are walking to school in the dark.

As they already do in many other places. Why should this be particularly dangerous for the UK compared to elsewhere?

[bunderbunder]

Alternatively, permanent winter time would mean that school hours are entirely during daylight if we shift the school hours to match.

Alternatively, some time zones are so wide that there's no argument that assumes a constant school or work start time and can also work with a standard time system. For example, not far east of where I live, it's possible to switch your clock from 8AM to 7AM just by driving to the next town over.

All of this by way of saying, presenting these sorts of observations as if they were compelling is specious. With the sole exception of the rate at which the planet is spinning, literally every variable is easy to vary.

[wongarsu]

The potential effects on mood and freetime activities of having all sunlight hours fall into school hours sound more serious than walking to school in the dark (most places where you walk are already illuminated quite well)

[nicoburns]

I'd much rather school kids had time to play in the light after school.

[Angostura]

Where as at the moment we drive home in the dark.

[madcaptenor]

Iceland is already on permanent summer time. Reykjavik is at longitude 22 degrees west, so they're "naturally" in GMT-1 (and close to the line with GMT-2) but they use GMT year-round. (The country as a whole is between 13 degrees west and 25 degrees west.)

[FearNotDaniel]

Iceland is not in the EU. And also has no land borders with member states. So it doesn't really matter what they choose to do from a Europe-wide perspective.

[renholder]

Fixed. I didn't realise they had frozen their application.