The Transport Council discussed the proposed Eighth Directive on 11 March and agreed it, so it moves forward to the next stage, from a Commission proposal to a Common Position. Many EU documents are now available on the WWW as the EU have opened the previously subscription only RAPID database to everyone. The report of this transport council took a while to arrive but it is there now. RAPID as available at http://europa.eu.int/en/comm/spp/rapid.html The document reference is PRES/97/70, or you can search for `transport council', or you can try the following long URL for the English text version: http://europa.eu.int/rapid/cgi/rapcgi.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=PRES/97/70|0|RAPID&lg=EN It is available in PDF as well, and also in French. The section about Summer Time is quoted below: --------- SUMMER-TIME ARRANGEMENTS The Council reached political agreement by a qualified majority, with France voting against, on a common position prior to adoption of the eighth Directive on summer-time arrangements. Once formally adopted, the common position will be forwarded to the European Parliament for a second reading, in accordance with the co-decision procedure. The aim of the eighth Directive is to harmonize the dates and times for the beginning and end of summer time throughout the Community for the period from 1998 to 2001. In addition, the Council and the Commission approved the following joint declaration: "The Council and the Commission consider that the social and economic implications of the decisions concerning summer-time arrangements justify thorough examination, which will be effected before the eighth Directive elapses. For this purpose, the Commission will forward a detailed report to the Council by 30 June 1999 at the latest, and the Council and the Commission agree to carry out, with the aid of a group comprising representatives of interest groups and Member States' national experts, an in-depth examination of the implications of applying summer-time arrangements, including the institutional aspects of coordination of times between the Member States of the European Union." Furthermore, the United Kingdom made the following unilateral statement: "The United Kingdom states that, while it has no difficulties with the substance of the proposed eighth summer-time Directive, on subsidiarity grounds it considers that Member States' summer-time arrangements would be best addressed in a Recommendation." --------- What this means is: - The eighth directive proposal rules have been accepted. These are the same as the current rules (last Sunday in March and last Sunday in October). The rules will run until 2001. - The French have had their request to abandon summer time turned down. They have been promised some sort of review in 1999 which might change the rules for 2000 and 2001. I personally doubt that anything will happen before a ninth directive as there won't be the time to go though all the necessary steps between 30 June 1999 and March 2000. These people have no sense of deadlines and they will probably all be caught up in Millennium projects by then anyway. - The UK were just stirring things up. Subsidiarity is a Maastricht Treaty buzzword meaning that member states should be free to decide things for themselves unless it is really necessary for things to be done at a European level. A Recommendation rather than a Directive would allow states to ignore it and France could abandon summer time if it felt like it. It is interesting to see the UK using this subsidiarity argument as by doing so they are saying that there is no need to harmonise time arrangements in Europe. This means they will not be able to use the harmonisation argument next time the question of changing the UK's timezone comes up. The next stage is to let the European Parliament have their say, although I don't think they have the power to amend it. Then it is finally confirmed by the Council. This probably won't happen until May. The UK government then has to pass a Staturary Instrument to implement the Directive. My guess is that they won't manage this before Parliament rises for the summer recess so it won't happen until about October. Peter Ilieve peter@aldie.co.uk