“Clock-changing must stop,” Juncker told lawmakers, insisting that daylight saving shifts would end by October 2019 at latest. “We are out of time.”
But Juncker’s proposal irritated national leaders, who questioned the Commission’s mandate for proposing such a shift, let alone imposing a short timeline for its costly implementation.
Then-Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa — who became the president of the European Council last year — rejected the idea altogether, citing the advice of technical experts who said the change would be detrimental to his country’s citizens. Greece, too, was opposed to the change.
The split among national leaders permitted daylight saving to survive Juncker’s 2019 deadline and the European Parliament’s later call for time changes to end by 2021. It’s unclear if Spain’s effort is quixotic: to secure the Council’s endorsement of the proposal, it requires the backing of a qualified majority of member countries.
Sánchez will need to convince 15 out of the bloc’s 27 member countries, or a group of countries representing at least 65 percent of the EU’s population, to back the idea — and hope fewer than four capitals oppose it outright.
Seasonal clock-changing was first introduced in Europe during World War I in a bid to conserve coal, but was abandoned after the conflict ended. Similar energy concerns prompted most countries to reintroduce the scheme during World War II, and in response to the 1970s global oil crisis.
In 1980 the then-European Communities issued its first directive on time arrangements to ensure all EU members followed the practice and made the biannual switch at the same date and time. The current EU rules, which have been in place since 2001, specify EU member countries move their clocks forward one hour at 1 a.m. on the last Sunday of March, and wind back one hour on the last Sunday in October.