Currently all EU Member States follow the same timetable to change the hour. This ensures that trade and travel run smoothly between states and is regulated by the European Union (through Directive 2000/84/EC).
In recent years the practice has been questioned by many people and the debate has gradually built momentum, to the point that the issue was taken up by the Union. The debate on “Summertime” primarily focuses on two points: the need to maintain harmonisation in all areas such as trade and the varied effects the switching from summertime to wintertime in October and from wintertime to summertime in March has on the routine lives of Citizens.
How
has the issue been tackled by the European Union?
The
European Parliament: Passed a resolution
in February 2018, which called on the Commission to prepare a thorough
assessment of Summertime arrangements in Member States and come up with a
proposal.
The
Commission: Carried a public consultation. The results of this show that 84% of
4.6 million respondents want to abolish time changes. 54% of Maltese
participants have said that they were in favour of abolishing time
changes.
On 12 September 2018, following the State of the Union Speech, the Commission published a Proposal to end seasonal time changes throughout the EU in 2019.
The Proposal
The Proposed amendment to the Directive provides that Member States may decide whether they want their standard time to correspond to their current summertime or wintertime. Therefore, Member States will be allowed to make one additional time change in October 2019 and from that date onwards they will no longer apply changes to their seasonal time.
For the proposed amendments to become effective, they would require the approval of a qualified majority of EU member states Governments and the European Parliament.
Discussions on this Proposal are moving at a very fast pace as the Commission would like to conclude this file before the end of the current mandate. For this to happen, the Council and the European Parliament need to reach a political agreement before the end of March 2019.
What is the next step?
The Government has decided to conduct this online public consultation on the functioning of the current EU summertime arrangements and to assess whether they should be changed.
This information will help the Government form its position ahead of discussions at EU level.