TZ changes for Lithuania and Estonia

[Steffen Thorsen]

More changes to go:

* Lithuania will not come back to winter time this year and will stay in
  EET, and maybe DST will be dropped next year as well - so there is a
  Zone-change here.

* Estonia has announced that DST will not be used anymore (but the
  transition back to normal time in October will go as planned).

I was informed of these facts by Jacek Bulinski <jacekb at bci.pl> who
read it in the Polish newspaper "Gazeta", but I have researched some
Baltic news sources to get some more information, partly through
subscription, and have found these articles:

http://www.elta.lt/txt99/news.txt (the contents of this URL changes every
day, so I include the relevant parts here):

    LITHUANIA BACK IN SECOND TIME ZONE

    Vilnius, Sept 29 (ELTA) - Lithuania has shifted back to the
second time zone (GMT plus two hours) to be valid here starting from
October 31, as decided by the national government on Wednesday.
    According to Cabinet decision, on the last Sunday of October,
Lithuanians will not shift their clocks one hour backward as it was
done traditionally to switch to winter time.
    The aforesaid decision on nullifying the so-called "Andrikiene
(ex-Eurominister) time" came after a survey of Vilmorus public
opinion firm revealed a wide disapproval among population of 1998
time reform implemented by the former government.
    Majority of polled people stated they wanted Lithuania to be in
usual second time zone again.
    Moreover, the government hopes that a shift-back will allow to
take a better advantage of daylight and scale down the negative
phenomena brought about by the presence in the first (central
European) time zone.
    However, the time change will not lead to any alteration of
working hours and extra money will be necessary merely to adjust
transport schedules.
    The Lithuanian government also announced plans to consider a
motion to give up shifting to summer time in spring, as it was
already done by Estonia. 


Article obainted from within "The Baltic Times" September 9th 1999
http://www.lursoft.lv/en/lpib.html

Estonia falls off summer time

        TALLINN (BNS) This year will mark the last time Estonia shifts to
summer time, a council of the ruling coalition announced Sept. 6.

When Estonians turn their watches back one hour on the last Sunday in
October, they will enter the time zone in which they will stay henceforth,
year round.

We still need to turn back watches this fall because then we'll have the
right time, said Andres Tarand, chairman of the coalition council. Tarand,
together with Reform Party leader Siim Kallas, has championed the case
against summer time over the past few years. The ruling coalition had
promised back in March to cancel the switch, but the parties "ironically
enough" ran out of time and could not complete the job this spring. 

But what this could mean for Estonia's chances of joining the European
Union are still unclear. In 1994, the EU declared summer time compulsory
for all membe r states until 2001. Brussels has yet to decide what to do
after that. 


Regards,
Steffen

-- 
Steffen Thorsen <steffen at thorsen.priv.no> <steffent at pvv.ntnu.no>
http://www.thorsen.priv.no