It’s almost that time again: summer time starts. On Sunday March 31, 2024 there is a time change. The bad news: an hour of sleep is taken away from us. The good news: it stays light longer in the evening.
The time change has always been controversial; in fact, the EU has been discussing for several years whether to abolish it. More about the history behind the clock change, its pros and cons, and when at the earliest it will be phased out, can be found here:
Let’s start at the beginning. The idea of daylight saving time was first documented in an essay by Benjamin Franklin from 1784. Night owl and late riser Franklin wrote the – rather ironic – letter to the editor of the ‘Journal de Paris’. “An economic project”. In it he satirically told readers how many candles you could save if there was an extra hour of light in the evening.
The title of Franklin’s essay illustrates what has always been the main driving force behind a time change: economic considerations. The idea received a lot of attention at the time, but it was mainly researchers and scientists who promoted it. The time change initially had little appeal among the general population – too complicated, it was decided at the time.
Only with the outbreak of the First World War did the time change gain new impetus. because they wanted to save fuel for lighting, which was becoming scarce. Almost all parties involved in the war introduced summer time. After the end of the war, the war measure, which was partly unpopular among the population, was abolished in isolated cases, and the Second World War brought the changing of clocks in the summer back into the picture.
Switzerland also briefly introduced the time change as a war measure in 1941 and 1942. In the late 1970s, as a result of the oil crisis in Germany and Austria, there were renewed attempts to introduce winter time, or a twice-yearly change. Swiss politicians wanted to follow suit However, the population thwarted their plans through referenda and plebiscites.
When neighboring countries finally introduced the six-monthly time change in 1980, the problems became apparent. Switzerland, as a so-called time island in the middle of Europe, where the clocks were different half the year, made the organization of Central European rail traffic considerably more difficult. On January 1, 1981, the time change also came into effect in Switzerland. A referendum was no longer held and later attempts to abolish it – for example by SVP father Christoph Blocher – also failed.
In the 1980s, the division into winter time, or standard time, and summer time was negatively received. “In Bonn you almost never make a decision [damals Hauptstadt der BRD, Anm. d. Red.] because of the time change we will be in an uproar!” the opposition became heated. The main focus at the time was that the SBB would have to bear serious economic consequences if Switzerland did not also switch to summer time.
To make the transition as smooth as possible, it was decided to schedule the time change for one evening during the weekend. This time made the changeover easier for the SBB, a large part of the population sleeps at this hour and latecomers still have time to change their clocks on Sundays.
On Sunday, winter time ends and summer time begins. This means that we move the clock forward one hour, from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. Most clocks change automatically.
The arguments for the time change in Switzerland were always of a practical nature: the emphasis was on adaptation to the European standard. In Europe, summer time was mainly introduced for economic reasons. The question of whether this effectively saves energy has been re-examined in the course of the debate on abolition in the EU, but studies have not yet been able to provide a clear answer.
It is argued that although heating is needed earlier in winter, less artificial light is needed in summer evenings. Some recent studies in Germany have concluded that only marginal energy savings can be achieved at best. Overall, however, the findings cannot be generalized well. What applies to a small village in Norway does not necessarily apply to a city in the south of Spain.
The research situation is also unclear because the production of light and energy is constantly changing. There is now a new argument for daylight saving time: owners of photovoltaic systems have a greater opportunity to use the electricity produced themselves. This is because the electricity generation and the user profile are better aligned in the evenings.
Some researchers would welcome a prolonged winter period for health reasons. The time changes – especially those in spring – lead to mini-jet lag in some people and can cause sleep disorders. But the time change can also have a stressful effect on a biological level. Blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature and hormone release, for example, follow an internal biological clock. If the daily rhythm changes, this can lead to adjustment problems and therefore to complaints.
However, the research on health effects is generally rather sparse and contradictory. On the one hand, it seems to be confirmed that the shorter hour in the spring has greater consequences than the change from summer to winter time in the autumn. These can be attributed to sleep deprivation, although traces of this apparently disappear after a week in most people. On the other hand, it can be shown that the different chronotypes – that is, the categories into which people can be divided according to their preferred sleep-wake phases – respond differently. A study showed that late chronotypes – the so-called owls – only adjust their sleep times for a short time and do not adapt their activity patterns to the changed time of day and the new rhythm.
The then German ruling party CDU decided in 2014 to campaign for the abolition of the change. The EU only appeared on the scene in 2018. The EU Parliament has instructed the European Commission to reassess the time change in general. They then started an investigation. An initial evaluation showed that 84 percent of participants were in favor of abolition.
The EU then planned to listen to its citizens and abolish the division into summer and winter time after 2021. Both the European Commission and Parliament have agreed to this timetable. But then came the corona pandemic.
Since then, the clock hasn’t moved much forward on this issue. The EU still faces a major problem with the issue of the new normal time, i.e. whether summer or winter time should apply after the abolition.
But given that the EU has an east-west expansion that must be underestimated, this decision is not entirely trivial. For example, if one agreed on summer time, it would be dark in western Europe until shortly before 10 a.m. in winter. On the other hand, if it were permanent winter time, the East would have a ‘problem’ – for example in Poland it would be light at 3am in summer.
Although the EU aims for a uniform implementation, each EU country must decide for itself whether it wants to live in perpetual summer time or standard time in the future. That is why the European Council – the body of heads of state and government of the European Union – has been obliged to decide on this since 2019. But the worm has been here for a while and the agenda item is being pushed further and further out. There is no deadline by which the European Council must have agreed on a position, as a spokeswoman for the EU Parliament explained to Watson.
Regardless of what the EU decides – Switzerland will follow, knowingly (or ill). As with the adjustment to Europe when this was introduced, today it would not make sense to keep the time change twice a year.
Only about a third of all countries have committed to daylight saving time. This includes most European and North American countries. The time change also exists in Israel, Syria, Iran, Peru, Paraguay, Bahamas, Bermuda, Cuba, Mexico and parts of Australia. The fact that not all countries observe daylight saving time may mean that the same time does not apply all year round in the same time zone. This map provides an overview:
Source: Blick
I am Ross William, a passionate and experienced news writer with more than four years of experience in the writing industry. I have been working as an author for 24 Instant News Reporters covering the Trending section. With a keen eye for detail, I am able to find stories that capture people’s interest and help them stay informed.
