Time changeover: Why CET is preventing the abolition
On March 30, 2025, the clocks will change to summer time, while the abolition continues to stall. Two researchers show how the knot could be untied.
The Central European Time Zone extends very far to the west and east – This is a major obstacle to abolishing the time changeover.
(Image: CIA/IANA)
Europe needs a new regulation for the time zones – then it could finally work with the abolition of the time changeover. Two researchers from the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences have made this suggestion. The proposal may come at just the right time: according to the German Press Agency, Poland, which has held the EU Council presidency since January, wants to explore how to proceed with the issue.
When the clocks go back to summer time on Sunday, March 30, 2025, they will start again: the discussions about the fact that the EU wanted to abolish the time changeover a long time ago, but supposedly just can't manage it. And that the six-monthly forward and backward adjustment, which was once introduced to save energy, does nothing, except that many people are happy about an extra hour on Sundays in the fall and others are even more annoyed about the lost hour in the spring. Surveys have shown: A majority in Germany is in favor of abolishing the time change.
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Member states must decide
To save the honor of the European Union, it must be made clear: The abolition of the time change did not fail because of the EU. In fact, by political standards, it decided very stringently and quickly. In September 2018, the European Commission proposed ending the changeover. A few months later, in March 2019, the European Parliament supported this proposal and passed the ball to half of the member states to find a common position in the Council.
The ball has now been sitting there for six years and is not being played. One reason for this could be that the EU Commission set the member states the task of squaring the circle. The desire at EU level is to find a uniform solution in order to avoid chaos, while at the same time the abolition of the time change would lead to great inequality in the daily routines of the member states.
When the sun rises too early
Prof. Dr. Korbinian von Blanckenburg sums up the problem in a nutshell: "If standard or winter time were to apply all year round, we would have sunshine from 3 a.m. to 8 p.m. in eastern Poland and from 6 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. in western Spain on the summer solstice in mid-June." If, on the other hand, summer time were to become established as a year-round time, the sun would not rise in Spain in winter until 10 a.m. – This would also meet with little approval there.
In March 2024, the Dean of the Department of Economics therefore submitted a proposal that would solve these problems and at the same time make it possible to abolish the time change: Europe needs a new division of time zones. There are currently three standard time zones in the EU: Western European Time (Ireland, Portugal), Central European Time (17 member states, including Germany and Austria) and Eastern European Time (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania).
Why CET is the problem
Central European Time is problematic with regard to the abolition of the time change. "It covers around 30 degrees of longitude, which is twice the length of a normal time zone," says Philipp Neumann, PhD student and research assistant at the TH OWL. Von Blanckenburg proposes that Spain switch from CET to Portugal's time zone and that all countries to the east of Germany switch to Eastern European Time.
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This would, of course, mean that travelers would have to change their clocks more often when traveling within Europe. Neumann, who, together with von Blanckenburg, has intensively examined the consequences of the time changeover in a new study, considers this to be more neglectful, especially with regard to possible economic disadvantages: he questions "to what extent these disadvantages still occur today in our digital communication with e-mails and via web conferences," he told heise online. In addition, there are already delays in business processes because work in offices and stores starts later in some countries than in others.
Time changeover has many disadvantages
In contrast, the effects of the previous six-monthly changes are much more serious. An analysis of various studies has shown that many people not only sleep up to 45 minutes less a day on average around the time change: the loss of sleep sometimes lasts throughout the entire summer period and affects people's health – and even leads to mortality.
His conclusion: instead of productivity gains, there are economic losses. When it comes to road safety and crime, the results are inconsistent. "The few positive effects are clearly negligible," says Neumann. He also advises switching to standard time all year round. But he is convinced that this will only work if the time zones are also addressed.
(mki)
