Poland on course to end European winter/summer time

A bill to end the current winter/summer time arrangement has passed the committee stage with unanimous backing. If the bill passes, this would make the Poland the only country in the EU to operate on Moscow time. Interestingly it was introduced by PSL. Thoughts anybody?

Abolishing daylight saving time may seem like a small issue, but I think it's very significant.

Firstly, should the law pass,which it has every chance of doing with its current unanimous cross-party support, Poland will once again be in breach of EU policy, deliberately and quite unnecessarily defying an EU directive and being the only member state to operate on a different time.

Secondly, in becoming the only EU member state to abolish daylight saving, they distance themselves from their neighbours and instead of operating on the same time as their trading partners in Germany, they choose to operate on the same time as Russia.

It seems once again that it's a case of Poland being awkward merely for the sake of it and their way of sending out a message of 'independence'.

Incidentally, due to a legal precedent, an EU member who breaches a directive, may have to pay damages to companies or individuals adversely affected by it. So let's hope that if it goes ahead, it doesn't result in law suits by those whose businesses may be affected.

@Atch
Atch, I agree with your assessment, ie the government is using this to try and send a message of "independence". My family and I used to live in Istanbul until last April, and that path is very similar to the one followed by Erdogan 2 years ago for the same reasons, when he also decided to end winter/summer time.

The PSL who put the bill forward claim that daylight saving time adversely affects people's health but I took a look at a selection of the research which has been done and there's no very compelling case for abolishing it. But even if there were, the correct approach is to raise the matter within the EU and canvass other members as to their views. The decision of one member to depart from an accepted norm affects everyone so it's at the very least a basic courtesy that you would extend to your partners. Then if there is enough support, I'm sure there are channels where it can go through a process of discussion.

What is particularly worrying is that it has cross party support so it's not simply a question of blaming PIS. It says something about the Polish parliament and the Polish political scene as a whole when everybody is in support of a reform for which there is hardly a pressing need and which is in direct breach of EU policy, especially at such a sensitive time when Poland is increasingly perceived as being in conflict with all and sundry.

Finland, the Baltics, Romania, Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus are all in the EU and would all be on the same time zone if we changed, it's a matter of geography not politics - I'm in favor as I hate those dark mornings taking the kids to school. As it stands Poland is not in its natural time zone (edit having looked at a map it probably is, but at the edge of it and I still hate getting up in the dark)

I didn't know Moscow has changed its time zone in 2014 - thought it was still two hours ahead so I learn something every day !

Yes, but time zones and DST are not the same thing. All those countries you mention still use DST. Poland would be the only country in the EU to not co-ordinate with others, so for six months of the year Poland would have the same time as some countries but for the other six it wouldn't - that seems rather messy.

Incidentally I discovered that this matter has already been officially debated as recently as a year ago in the EU. Seven countries wanted to abolish DST and the matter was discussed by the European Commission. The conclusion was that there was not sufficient evidence supporting a removal of DST, and if a change was to be made, it would have to be harmonized. The Commission also stated that it hadn't received any official requests on the issue from any member states.

So it's still a question of Poland simply deciding that they will pick and choose which bits of EU policy they adhere to and will ignore anything they don't like or that doesn't go in their favour. It's also sending a message to other EU members that you can go ahead and take EU law into your own hands. Pushing boundaries like a naughty child, that's what it boils down to.

It is more of a question of blaming PSL.


You perhaps don't know it, but about 65% of the European population is against the present winter/summer time arrangement. They would prefer the unchanged time throughout the year.


And you will precisely have them once the winter/summer time arrangment is abolished in Poland. Either your Polish is not good enough to pick up this important difference or you have automatically assumed a return to the normal (winter) Polish time throughout the year in the proposal. In reality, the proposal is to fix the summer time and not the winter one, so it is effectively going to be a change of the time zone for Poland. Thus you should either opt for the present arrangment or for the fixation of the winter time if you don't like dark mornings in winter.

The benefits of DST are negligible, and it just results in people being late for work and missing appointments. It may well be that all of Europe will abandon this in time. Its origins lie in times when electric light was not universal, and when it saved considerable amounts of energy. Those times are long gone.

Maybe


How? In northern Europe it doesn't seem to affect energy use at all since for most of DST it gets light before people get up and stays light after they would go to bed

If anything I think having DST all year round would save a little more in the winter

Am I missing something?

Personally I'm not bothered one way or another although I love dark winter mornings, it's weird I know but I do. In fact one of the things I miss in Poland is the darkness of winter mornings in Ireland. I find the idea of even brighter winter mornings quite depressing. However the point is not about the merits or otherwise of DST but the fact that Poland will become the only EU country to fail to observe it and be in breach of an agreed EU policy for no real purpose other than for the sake of showing that they can be.

canceling dst would not affect winter as winter is standard time. without dst it would get light in summer at 3 am and dark at 830 or 9.

I think the reason behind the proposal is that most people hate the change of time twice a year.


If you love that, you should support the idea of abandoning DST in Poland or in true fact support the idea of extending DST onto the entire year. I once experienced this kind of a 'dark morning' myself two years ago when my biological clock woke me up in accordance with the hour of DST in the middle of ... January. My eyes skipped the hour figure on my digital clock upon waking up and I only saw the '00' minutes figure, so I thought I was getting up at the right time of 6:00 hours for work, while in fact it was 5:00 hours. What a lovely winter morning it was when I went outside! A bit of snow in the air (prószył śnieg) and a layer of snow on the ground, but why the hell it was so dark around me!? I walked to the station in almost complete darkness. Oh, it is just a bit more cloudy today - I thought to myself - and it was only at the Warsaw West station that I saw on the station clock I was there one hour earlier than usual.

It's not cancelling DST. It's extending DST onto the whole year. Thus the summer time is going to become standard time in Poland if the bill gets through.

Why do people want to comment on something they have absolutely no idea about?

I actually like that idea, the early dark is the main thing I dislike in the winter. Yes, cold and snow and ice are also pretty terrible but I got used to the cold much quicker than I got used to it getting pictch black at 17.00...

I just don't like it being dark at like 16 17 in the winters. Otherwise it's whatever...

It's not that difficult to adjust your clock or cell phone to add or subtract an hour. But when you have complex machinery, robots, super computers, running on some specific formula or algorithm or something in which time is a factor or if you're running an operation on JIT (just-in-time) principles the time switch is a pain in the butt.

Johhny, are you lurking in the forum secrectly? Probably you are wondering why I am still active instead of turning in at midnight? Didn`t you know Poland is changing her cloks for winter DST this night? I am enjoying one surplus hour now.

The Eastern parts of Poland basically match some Bulgarian lands, yet they have 1 hr difference. CET doesn't make much sense for them and Eastern Serbia, and also for Galicia and Western Spain.

Supposedly Spain used to be on UK-Portugal time but it was switched because Franco wanted to have the same time as Germany.... I'm a bit surprised that de-Francoization has never addressed this (as far as I know...)

That isn't a great thing; Scotland doesn't like it much. When there was a proposal to return to Double British Summer Time (which they had in the war to help farmers) Scotland was very against; they'd be dark for most of the morning.

With time changes, there are people in ny given zone who gain, and those who lose. For Spain, they could comfortably be in the same zone as UK/Portugal. For others, not so comfortable.