On 2018-08-31 16:19:32 (+0100), John Wilcock wrote:
Le 31/08/2018 à 16:05, Philip Paeps a écrit :
On 2018-08-31 13:33:42 (+0100), Marshall Eubanks wrote:
In a consultation paper it said one option would be to let each member state decide whether to go for permanent summer or winter time. That would be "a sovereign decision of each member state", Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein explained on Friday.
That'll go well ...
Assuming that was intended ironically, why? Countries realise that they need to balance convenience for their citizens against the importance of coordinating time with their trading partners.
Making it a purely domestic matter could open the door to countries potentially "experimenting" with time zones over a period of years. While they would presumably coordinate with their trading partners, they have less of an incentive to announce any changes to the wider world in sufficient time for software to catch up.
I can't see France or any of the Benelux countries agreeing to permanent UTC+2 (which would be around two hours ahead of local solar time), nor can I see Germany or Italy deciding to be on a different time zone to France and Benelux. So the heart of Europe will IMO stay on UTC+1. Spain might decide to do the geographically logical thing and join Portugal on UTC+0, but I think it is more likely to stay on UTC+1 too. Likewise, various eastern European countries "ought" to change to UTC+2, but would almost certainly make the decision as a bloc rather than piecemeal. And the Nordic countries, which share latitude-related issues, would be highly likely to make a joint decision too.
I'm not too worried about countries moving their standard time relative to each other. But I could easily imagine some countries deciding to try out not changing back to standard time one winter and then then deciding the next winter that maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all and reintroducing standard time. Philip -- Philip Paeps Senior Reality Engineer Ministry of Information