The following article appeared in uk.misc and a few other groups as part of a discussion of time matters. (It is surprising how much confusion there still is about the EU start/end dates.)

From: martin@ci.ua.pt (Martin Bruckmann) Newsgroups: uk.misc,soc.culture.french,rec.travel.air,rec.travel.misc, rec.travel.europe Subject: Re: Time difference between Paris & London after clocks change Date: 27 Feb 1996 15:35:53 GMT Organization: Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal Message-ID: <4gv8cp$atu@titan.ci.ua.pt>

... And, a novelty (or back to how it was before E.U.) : Portugal is re-adopting its more natural time, i.e. the same as in the U.K. It is still 1h delay compared to its solar time, but it's already better than the E.U. imposed Central European Time, which forced little kids to wake up very early to go to school in the total darkness in Winter...

-- All about Portuguese Internet Sites & People on http://sapo.ua.pt

I asked for some more info by email and this was the result, quoted with permission:

From: Martin Bruckmann <martin@ua.pt> To: peter@aldie.co.uk (Peter Ilieve) Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 10:09:31 +0000 (PWT)

...

[my query] Is this true? It was only a few years ago that you changed from GMT to CET. I would like to pass this information along to Arthur Olson's timezone mailing list. Do you have a reference to the law or whatever it is that says you will change back? When will you change?

Yes, it is true. Actually, we just stayed with "Winter time" instead of changing to Summer time this year. This has been decided by the new Prime Minister and his government a month ago or so. Exact legal references ? I don't have any, nor would I know where to look for them. What is this "Arthur Olson's timezone mailing list" ?

After a bit more clarification it seems that the new Portugese Prime Minister has got fed up with getting up in the dark in the Winter and has decided they won't put the clocks forward this March. I assume they will then put them back in October, reverting to GMT as they were before 1992. I am not an expert on Portugal and although Martin will undoubtedly know more than me I don't think he would consider himself a timezone expert, so best treat this as a warning for now. Does anyone know more? Peter Ilieve peter@aldie.co.uk