The morning of this Saturday 26 from October to sunday 27 October, at 03:00 a.m., the so-called summer time and the clock will be turned back until it reads 02:00 hours, thus giving start at winter time. So, tonight he will sleep for another hour.
One more year, winter time will be recovered, according to the European Time Change Directive which is applied in all EU States to achieve energy savings, despite doubts about the effectiveness of this measure in that sense.
According to the Institute for Diversification and Energy Saving (IDAE), changing the time can reduce energy consumption by 100%, which translates into savings of approximately 90 million euros annually in Spanish homes. That is, an average of six euros of savings per household.
The most current report on the impact of this time change was prepared by the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy of the European Parliament in 2018.
That work points out that seasonal time changes can produce savings but they are marginal and, therefore, there is no certainty that the benefits will be obtained in all member states.
Likewise, he adds that, although energy savings can occur in lighting, it is not so obvious that the same thing happens with heating, which could even increase consumption.
Topic under debate since 2018
Precisely, the debate on the time change in the European Union began in 2018 when the European Commission held a public consultation in which more than 80% of 4.6 million of citizens who participated They were in favor of ending time changes.
Based on this result, the Commission proposed, at the initiative of Finlandfinish this practice and that in March 2019 the last time change occurred, but the lack of consensus between the states and the impact evaluations delayed the possible cancellation of the time change.
The first provisions on daylight saving time were adopted in Europe in 1980 and since the year 2000with the aforementioned directive, the rules were established that mark its beginning in March and its end in October.
The time change began to become widespread starting in 1974, starting from the first oil crisis, when some countries decided to advance the clock to make better use of sunlight and thus consume less electricity for lighting. It is applied as a directive from 1981 and has been successively renewed every four years.
However, since the approval of the Ninth Directive by the European Parliament and the Council of the Union in January 2001, the change has been applied indefinitely. The Directive is incorporated into the Spanish legal system by Royal decree 236/2002from March 1.
Schedule change until at least 2026
In Spain, on March 15, 2022, Official State Gazette published a ministerial order that recalled that the Council of Ministers of September 7, 2018 created a Commission of 14 expert people for the study of the reform of the official time, in charge of preparing an evaluation report on the regulatory provisions of the time change, as well as on the convenience of maintaining Central European time in our country.
This commission issued a report on March 20, 2019 which concluded that it was not advisable to produce any hasty change in time zones until there was a shared consensus and practical dissemination to citizens of the risks and opportunities that it entails.
On the other hand, the analysis indicated that time zones should always be linked to the uses of time in order to clarify concepts and provide behavioral patterns that seek certain shared models, such as that of co-responsibility. However, no “conclusive resolution” was reached, given the “large amount of impact repercussions” that this measure has in fields such as economic or cultural.
For now, in accordance with this ministerial order, the time change will continue to occur, at least until 2026every late morning of Saturday-Sunday in October, to start winter time, and every early morning of the last Saturday-Sunday in March, when it will switch to summer time.
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