7th EC directive on summer time

[Peter Ilieve]

I was just sitting down to type this in when Paul Eggert's mail with
all the suggested changes arrived. I now have the text of the 7th EC
directive on summer time arrangements (94/21/EC), which was approved
on 30 May. This was a few days before I spoke to the EC Information
Office in Edinburgh back in June, but they didn't know about it then,
which is disappointing.

It confirms the dates set out in the Common Position document I reported
in June. The major changes from existing practice are that 1995 will be
the last year that the UK and Eire finish on a different date from
everyone else, and the common end date from 1996 onwards will be the
last Sunday in October.

The dates again, taken from my last mail:

Year    Start       End             End (UK & Eire, 1995 only)
(rule)  (last Sun)  (last Sun)      (4th Sun)
1995    26 March    24 September    22 October
1996    31 March    27 October
1997    30 March    26 October


I agree with the change that Paul has suggested, of having a rule
of Oct Sun>=22 for 1990--95, rather than only for 1995.

There is no sign of a UK Summer Time Order yet. Our parliament is on
holiday until about October so it won't appear until then I guess.
They didn't go into recess until about two weeks ago so they had plenty
of time since 30 May to get organised. It is almost inconceivable that
the UK Order wouldn't follow these dates, as the rest of the EU has
effectively moved to our ending date, but anything is possible with
politicians.

Austria has already voted in a referendum to join the EU on 1 Jan 95
and it looks almost certain that Finland, Norway and Sweden will as well.
I seem to have lost my up-to-date tzdata files so I don't know if
they already have these countries using EU rules, but they will from 1995.


		Peter Ilieve		peter at memex.co.uk