[tz] EU Public Consultation on summertime arrangements

John Wilcock john at tradoc.fr
Mon Jul 9 07:25:02 UTC 2018


I'm surprised a consultation by the EU hasn't provoked more comment 
here. Anyway...

I'm not entirely convinced your second point is clear enough for 
bureaucrats not familiar with all the underlying concepts to understand.

> [...] if the European Union elected to go to
> permanent daylight saving, there's a good chance the Time Zone Database
> would model it as permanent standard time: for example, it would model
> permanent Central European Summer Time (CEST, UTC +02) not as daylight
> saving time, but as either permanent Eastern European Time (EET, UTC
> +02), or as a standard time whose name happened to end "Summer Time".

Surely tz could/would simply define new Western, Central and Eastern 
European Standard Time zones and assign the relevant locations to them 
as from the transition date, rather than "model" them to existing zones? 
Or are you suggesting that systems that aren't properly updated would 
present misleading names to users?

> Although this may seem like a small point as the UTC offsets of CEST and
> EET are identical, having multiple names for the same permanent time
> zone would undoubtedly confuse users and operators of computers, cell
> phones, and the like. For this reason, if the twice-yearly clock change
> is abolished, the EU should simply move time zone boundaries rather than
> proclaim "permanent summer time" in some areas.

It occurs to me that the EU might well decide to leave the boundaries as 
they are, and merely change the UTC offsets. How about "To minimise 
potential confusion, the EU should simply proclaim new UTC offsets for 
the 'standard time' in each zone and, if applicable, define any changes 
in zone boundaries"?

Just my €0.02!
-- 
John



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