Some thoughts ... Markus G. Kuhn <kuhn@cs.purdue.edu> suggested that we get more formal, call ourselves the "Timezone Information Center" and let ourselves become more well known. I don't want to requote his entire post but I do favor all his suggestions. Peter Ilieve reported in a message received here on 1996-Sep-05 08:00 GMT:
The BBC Radio 4 news reported this morning that the French prime minister Alain Juppe has issued some sort of letter indicating that France will abandon summer time and keep the clocks the same for the whole year...
The report said a parliamentary commission would now be set up to decide if France should use GMT+1 or GMT+2 as its standard time.
A thought; this October will be the first October that France will be voluntarily on GMT+2. It was involuntarily on GMT+2 during a couple of Octobers during the Nazi occupation. On the last day of GMT+2 this year, sunrise in Paris will be at 8:27, and at Cherbourg, 8:44. If GMT+2 were to become used all year sunrise in Paris would be delayed until 9:44, and in Cherbourg, 10:04!
I didn't catch what it said about the start date for any of this.
To which Antoine Leca commented (1996-09-05) :Addition reflexion from myself: this is only a mission; given the prior :art and the time needed for the mission to investigate, I don't expect :this to change the DST rules in France for 1997, and I understand the :goal is the 8th directive. [starting 1998] :BTW, there will be elections in March 1998 in France.
So much for EC Directives.
Actually the EC seems to give member states quite a bit of latitude in summer time dates; prior to 1995, the Directives specifically allowed the UK and Ireland authority to end summer time in late October, and that there was once a proposal to synchronize the end of summer time in 1984-6 at the second Sunday in October throughout the EC, but this fell through (source: some errors in the Nautical Almanac). What the EU might consider would be the adoption of something similar to the Uniform Time Act in the United States; set the dates for summer time but allow member states to opt out of the summer time provision if they so choose. Has anyone heard anything about the release date of the 8th Directive?