On Friday 31 August, the European Commission announced that it will be presenting a proposal to abolish the summer time/winter time rue and therefore end the change of hours every six months.
The announcement follows a statement by the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, earlier in the day on German television station ZDF, in which he said European citizens’ desire should be listened to.
The announcement of draft legislation directly echoes a public consultation launched on 4 July 2018, inviting people from the European Union to give their views on whether the hour change was still needed (see EUROPE 12056). It emerged that virtually 84% of the 4.6 million participants (the highest number of answers to a public consultation) want the hour change to be scrapped.
The European Commission’s proposal should soon be on the table of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament, since the usual PLO legislative procedure would apply in this case. The European Parliament voted last February to assess the impact of the current six-monthly hour change system (see EUROPE 11957).
In a press release the Commission says that detailed results of the public consultation would be published in the next few weeks. No date has been given for publication of the draft legislation.
Finally, European Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein said that the name of the proposal would simply ask for an end to the six-monthly hour change without suggesting to only keep the winter hours. The co-legislators will then gave details of how the member states will align themselves with a particular time zone. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)