In the early hours of Oct. 25, about 450 million Europeans will gain an hour of sleep and lose an hour of evening light, and for a week or two afterward, road accidents, heart attacks and workplace injuries will tick upward, as they do every time we do this. Then it will fade, and we will forget, and in March we will do it again in reverse.
The European Parliament voted in March 2019 to abolish the twice-yearly clock change, by 410 votes to 192, after a public consultation in which 84 percent of 4.6 million respondents said they wanted it gone. It remains the most popular thing the Parliament has ever done and one of the few it has failed to see through. Seven years later, the proposal sits in the Council of Ministers, where it has not been seriously discussed since 2019.
The reason is not that governments like the clock change. It is that they cannot agree on what to replace it with. Northern countries want permanent standard time, so that winter mornings are not pitch dark until 10. Southern countries want permanent summer time, so that evenings stay long. Each fears a patchwork in which Spain and France are an hour apart, or Germany and Poland.
That fear is reasonable. It is also no reason to do nothing. The Council could set a rule — standard time for all, say, with the option for any country to shift its time zone by a formal, one-time decision — and let the chips fall. Time zones already cut across Europe in odd places: Spain, which geographically belongs with Britain and Portugal, has run on Berlin time since 1940. Countries survive this. They would survive a little more of it.
The health evidence is no longer contested. Sleep researchers overwhelmingly favor permanent standard time, which aligns the clock with the sun and the body’s rhythms. The energy-saving rationale that justified the practice in the 1970s has evaporated; studies in several countries find no measurable effect, and some find a small increase in consumption. The main remaining argument for summer time is that people enjoy long evenings. They do. They would also enjoy them under standard time; they would simply have to get up earlier, which is what the sun has been recommending all along.
The Danish presidency of the Council ends in December. The Cypriot presidency begins in January. One of them should put the 2019 proposal back on the table with a deadline and a default. If governments cannot agree by 2028, standard time applies everywhere.
We have been having this argument for a generation. Let this be the last October we lose an hour to it.
Ingeborg Dahl is a contributing writer for The Continental Times Opinion section.