Today may be the last fall back in a part of Europe and, to be honest, I am a bit dazed because of the time change and a bit tired from changing all clocks, but what are time changes? They are a smart way of managing daylight throughout the year and definitely worth being dazed a little twice a year. It’s logical that we want daylight in winter mornings, for which standard (“winter”) time is pretty-much ideal (definitely better than summer time). If we were on summer time in winter, we’d have dark and depressing mornings.
This is a photo of a December morning (9 AM) in Moscow when they were observing summer time in winter. Not much to see? Yeah, that’d be because it’s pit black… Lovely, right? This is what awaits Europe if we switch to permanent summer time.
Anyhow, despite what time changes really are about and their usefulness, most people are just praising the Commission’s “decision” to abolish time changes. I thought it right to tell you more about the “decision”. The “decision” is not a decision at all, but a P R O P O S A L – nothing more, nothing less – despite how the media might put it.
Could someone tell me why daylight should wake us early in summer? Why have daylight when everyone’s sleeping and darkness when people are active; especially outdoors when we can just move our clocks one hour forward? Indeed, a single hour makes a real difference to most of us although that depends on the location (i.e. latitude).
And what does it cost us? Changing our clocks for a meagre hour two times a year. Now, I call that a bargain.
As simple as that – little sunlight in winter, extra sunlight in summer which we can arrange better by moving an hour forward ahead and all we need to do then is go back an hour in autumn, so we’re ready for winter again 🙂 I just cannot believe people can’t grasp that!
However, abolishing time changes is no longer the issue; European Commission’s proposal – allowing every member to choose whether to observe permanent “winter” or permanent summer time – is stupid and dangerous. If time changes are to be abolished, the whole continent should either observe permanent “winter” or permanent summer time. The proposal could easily result in chaos with every other country observing different time wich would be very bad for tourism, economy, communication, business, transport pleasure etc. I can’t believe someone had come up with something that stupid in one of their sessions; let alone that the Commission’s actually endorsing it!
Now, the basis of the proposal is a failure of a poll with the turnout of less than one percent. I elaborated why the poll is a failure further in the text I pasted bellow. Although, I’ve seen critical articles to the proposal lately, at the beginning – as soon as the results of the poll had been made public, and especially after the Commission had come with their proposal; that is – most media had been praising the “decision” – how we’re saved from changing our clocks twice a year… – and saying everything had been decided without saying what consequences such a “decision” could easily bring us. There’d been a few exceptions like this article and this one though even they lean towards favouring the abolishment of time changes a bit, but never mind.
Therefore, I bombarded the institutions of the EU with inquires about the proposal. I, also, sent a text accompanied by maps to a bunch of media. A local newspaper used the text for an article they published. You can read it here (Croatian).
Anyhow, I’m just going to paste the text and maps (unlike in the article in Novi list, you can enlarge the maps here; that is make the text readable) I sent the media here:
Dear All,
I have read many articles regarding the abolishment of time changes in the EU. Unfortunately, most either just state the time changes are going to be abolished or are content in saying we will no longer have to move our clocks.
We have been temporally harmonized and co-ordinated for twenty two years.
However, European Commission’s proposal on the time changes could easily put an end to such a situation. You can read it here. It is interesting to note that the proposal is still available only in English and French, despite being made on 12 September .
The proposal says every member should choose whether they want to observe permanent DST (summer time) or permanent standard (“winter”) time, which could result in illogical and absurd time zones on the continent. Instead of having to change our clocks twice a year on the whole continent, we could end up having to change them at every other border crossing throughout the year. When we meet a business partner or a friend from another European country or simply have family there or go to a holiday, we would to have to check the time zone because time zones would not follow any logic.
Click on the image to enlarge it
Click on the image to enlarge it.
Such a situation could ignite or reignite ethnic tensions.
Non-EU members are probably, but not necessarily, going to follow the closest EU neighbour. Imagine if Croatia opts for standard time (GMT+1 in Croatia’s case), as do Romania and Bulgaria (GMT+2 in their case), but Hungary opts for summer time (GMT+2 in their case – same as standard time in Romania and Bulgaria). Who is Serbia to follow in such a case? Whatever Serbia opts for, Serbian Republic in Bosnia is going to follow suit to be aligned with Serbia. Bosniaks are, probably reluctantly, going to back the Serbian Republic to avoid fragmenting the country. In that case, Croats are not going to be happy to have one hour difference with Croatia. Even if Bosnia unnecessarily ends up in two time zones, well… Just take a look at the inter-entity boundary line to see how that would look like. Even worse, although very unlikely, situation is that Bosnian cantons with Croatian majority would align their clocks with Croatia while the rest of the country would align them with Serbia. Imagine the “friendly arguments” while deciding what time Bosnia should observe if Croatia and Serbia wouldn’t follow the same time.
Click on the image to enlarge it.
Click on the image to enlarge it.
Then there’s Kosovo, which will probably opt for different time than Serbia just to spite them. Kosovo Serbs would be even more unhappy with such a situation than the afore mentioned Bosnian Croats.
The Balkans are not the only focal point. By the time the final decision takes affect, Brexit will have been finalized. Despite the UK no longer being obliged to follow EU directives, they are probably going to follow suit of the Republic of Ireland to avoid fragmenting Ireland. However, maybe they aren’t. Imagine how ethnic tensions in Ireland are going to rise with Northern Ireland and the Republic not aligned.
What I find really sad is that the basis of the proposal is a poll with a turnout of less than 1%. The Commission might call the poll “the Commission public consultation with ‘highest number of responses ever received'”, but the fact remains that the EU is not Croatia nor is it Luxembourg, nor any other small EU country. The EU has 28 members with the population of over five hundred and twelve million; making 4.6 million respondents a meagre number. You can look at the results here and see how poor the turnout really was. Most countries “are represented” with a lot of zeros; Germany (almost 4!) and Austria (almost 3!) being exceptions; meaning most of the respondents are from those countries, meaning other countries are not represented well; not to mention the rest of Europe that is going to be affected by the final decision. In addition, no campaign had been done prior to the poll (telling people that they can vote on an unbinding poll is not a campaign) and the poll with daylight being the main issue was held in the middle of summer when days are long! All in all, an insult to democracy; nothing more 😦
Macedonia is holding a referendum on the change of the country’s name on the 30th [September].* The turnout for the referendum to be valid must be 50% of the eligible voters + 1. How could they ever hope to join the EU with that attitude?! A poll, with a turnout of less than 1% is good enough for us…
Europe is facing many challenges and problems, but at least we have co-ordinated and harmonized time. Why make another unnecessary problem?
Best regards
P.S. I’m the author of the attached maps. Feel free to publish them.
To sum it all up, I’m going to quote a popular Croatian politician from the first half of the 20th century – Ne srljajte kao guske u maglu. Wikipedia translates it as Don’t rush like drunken geese into fog; basically, think before you act 🙂
*In the meantime, the referendum in Macedonia was held and the turnout was less than the required 50% + 1 vote (i.e. it was 35%), but Macedonian prime minister is still pushing it forth; either because he sees the European Commission is pushing forth their crap and his referendum had like a 35 times bigger turnout …or because of the fact that Macedonia is never going to get a better deal from Greece and the deal is the best compromise. And speaking of a compromise; time changes in Europe are just that – a compromise. We go an hour ahead in spring so southern Europe has later sunsets during the tourism period and then we go back an hour, so it dawns before noon in northern Europe in winter.
Anyhow, the Macedonia naming dispute is another (long) story 🙂 If you’re interested though, you can start reading about the dispute here and Google your way around for more 😉
Posted on 28th October 2018 at 10:19 GMT; 11:19 Central European Time or 12:19 Central European Summer Time if you prefer ×D
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