There still doesn't appear to be much action on getting the next (eighth) EC Directive on summertime arrangements finalised. My contact in the EC Information Office in Edinburgh produced the following response from Brussels in mid November: `Theoretically the proposal should be adopted by the end of the year. Nevertheless European Parliament having not adopted its opinion yet, we do not know if the Council will be able to adopt a common postion by this date. In this case the final adoption might be in early spring.' She also sent me some newspaper clippings from 29 Nov that said the European Parliament had `backed plans to have the European Union change to summertime on the same day to end the disruption caused when some states are out of phase with the rest'. As we are already in this state this can only be a reference to the French proposals to opt out of Summer Time altogether. I didn't think that the European Parliament had much role in adopting directives. I was going to point to the Commission's UK web pages at http://www.cec.org.uk for a page which explained the directive creation process but it seems to have vanished since I last looked. I am pretty sure that this directive is controlled by the EU transport ministers. They had a meeting on 12--13 December. They did not discuss the issue, or at least if they did it wasn't mentioned in the press release after the meeting, and they certainly didn't decide anything. The next (informal) meeting is on 31 Jan 97. The next formal meeting is on 11 Mar 97. Lots of diary publishers are probably getting worried. I hope that the EU isn't organising any sort of Millennium event. I would hope that even they would be embarrassed by missing that deadline. :-) Peter Ilieve peter@aldie.co.uk