Proposal for an Eighth European Parliament and Council Directive on Summer-Time Arrangements

[Peter Ilieve]

The long march towards the next, eighth, EU summer time directive has begun.
The last directive told the Commission to produce proposals for the next
directive by 1 Jan 96. These people have no concept of deadlines so they
finally got around to it on 25 April. It proposes no change to the
current rules of last Sunday in March to last Sunday in October, always
at 01:00 GMT. It proposes that the directive should run for four years and
gives dates as follows:

year	start	end
1998	29 Mar	25 Oct
1999	28 Mar	31 Oct
2000	26 Mar	29 Oct
2001	25 Mar	28 Oct

It says that having it run for four years is important to the transport
industry, etc. This wording appeared in the proposal for the seventh directive
but that was eventually knocked back to only three years. This one may go the
same way.

It says, as did the 7th directive, that these dates/times don't apply to
overseas territories of the Member States.

The document reference is COM(96) 106 final.

Attached to the proposal is a report from the Commission on the application of 
summer time in the EU which is interesting from a UK perspective. It seems
to be enthusiastically in favour of what it lists as `option 2': the
moving of the UK into the central European timezone. The effect is
slightly spolied by prominent notes at the start and end to the effect
that the timezone that Member States inhabit is nothing whatever to do
with the Commission. The UK government still hasn't formally decided
what to do about this issue. I am sure they just wish it would go away
so they never have to decide. With Portugal having rejoined the UK and
Eire in the GMT zone I still can't see the UK changing.


		Peter Ilieve		peter at aldie.co.uk