Summer time: the clocks go back tonight, for lack of European agreement
Electric Time technician Dan LaMoore adjusts the hand of a 3.5m diameter clock weighing 450 kilos on Tuesday, March 9, 2021, in Medfield, USA.
AP - Elise Amendola
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
France is switching to summer time: the clocks will advance 60 minutes overnight from Saturday to Sunday March 27.
More precisely, at two o'clock in the morning, we will move forward one hour: it will therefore be three o'clock.
One hour less sleep, but one hour more sun in the evening.
A controversial time change, whose announced end is still pending.
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There are those who prefer winter time and those who prefer summer time.
In any case, going back and forth on the clock every 6 months is still highly contested by doctors or parents of school children for their impact on biological rhythms.
The time change dates back to 1976. It was implemented in the wake of the oil shocks for the sake of saving energy, in this case electricity consumption, in the evening, after sunset.
Real savings, but which turn out to be modest.
So much so that in 2018, the European Commission proposed to put an end to it.
Since then, the case is still in limbo.
EU states are unable to agree
on the choice of time, summer or winter, which will be chosen and the Covid-19 crisis has further delayed the debates.
And it's not just in Europe that the time change is controversial.
In the United States, the Senate passed a bill on March 15 to permanently abandon winter time and stay on summer time.
The text must now be voted on by the House of Representatives and then be signed into law by President Joe Biden
The time change does not concern overseas territories, which never change time (with the exception of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, which is based on neighboring Canada), since most of 'among them are found in latitudes where the variations in sunshine are low throughout the year.
►Also read: Summer time: how to set the clocks
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