More changes to go: * Lithuania will not come back to winter time this year and will stay in EET, and maybe DST will be dropped next year as well - so there is a Zone-change here. * Estonia has announced that DST will not be used anymore (but the transition back to normal time in October will go as planned). I was informed of these facts by Jacek Bulinski <jacekb@bci.pl> who read it in the Polish newspaper "Gazeta", but I have researched some Baltic news sources to get some more information, partly through subscription, and have found these articles: http://www.elta.lt/txt99/news.txt (the contents of this URL changes every day, so I include the relevant parts here): LITHUANIA BACK IN SECOND TIME ZONE Vilnius, Sept 29 (ELTA) - Lithuania has shifted back to the second time zone (GMT plus two hours) to be valid here starting from October 31, as decided by the national government on Wednesday. According to Cabinet decision, on the last Sunday of October, Lithuanians will not shift their clocks one hour backward as it was done traditionally to switch to winter time. The aforesaid decision on nullifying the so-called "Andrikiene (ex-Eurominister) time" came after a survey of Vilmorus public opinion firm revealed a wide disapproval among population of 1998 time reform implemented by the former government. Majority of polled people stated they wanted Lithuania to be in usual second time zone again. Moreover, the government hopes that a shift-back will allow to take a better advantage of daylight and scale down the negative phenomena brought about by the presence in the first (central European) time zone. However, the time change will not lead to any alteration of working hours and extra money will be necessary merely to adjust transport schedules. The Lithuanian government also announced plans to consider a motion to give up shifting to summer time in spring, as it was already done by Estonia. Article obainted from within "The Baltic Times" September 9th 1999 http://www.lursoft.lv/en/lpib.html Estonia falls off summer time TALLINN (BNS) This year will mark the last time Estonia shifts to summer time, a council of the ruling coalition announced Sept. 6. When Estonians turn their watches back one hour on the last Sunday in October, they will enter the time zone in which they will stay henceforth, year round. We still need to turn back watches this fall because then we'll have the right time, said Andres Tarand, chairman of the coalition council. Tarand, together with Reform Party leader Siim Kallas, has championed the case against summer time over the past few years. The ruling coalition had promised back in March to cancel the switch, but the parties "ironically enough" ran out of time and could not complete the job this spring. But what this could mean for Estonia's chances of joining the European Union are still unclear. In 1994, the EU declared summer time compulsory for all membe r states until 2001. Brussels has yet to decide what to do after that. Regards, Steffen -- Steffen Thorsen <steffen@thorsen.priv.no> <steffent@pvv.ntnu.no> http://www.thorsen.priv.no
Steffen Thorsen scripsit:
But what this could mean for Estonia's chances of joining the European Union are still unclear. In 1994, the EU declared summer time compulsory for all membe r states until 2001. Brussels has yet to decide what to do after that.
This is wrong, IIRC: the EU harmonized the starting and ending dates of summer time *if* the member nation used it, but did not require its use. Can anyone confirm or refute this story? -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin
participants (2)
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John Cowan -
Steffen Thorsen