[tz] EU Public Consultation summertime arrangements
Michael H Deckers
michael.h.deckers at googlemail.com
Wed Jul 11 20:28:22 UTC 2018
On 2018-07-11 17:21, Paul Eggert wrote:
> How about appending a sentence like the following in the next draft?
>
>
> If the EU suggests new terminology, it should bear in mind the
> confusion that would ensue if the EU gave new meanings to existing
> names; for example, if a new French UTC +02 zone is called “Central
> European Time (CET)”, many existing applications that assume that CET
> is UTC +01 will misbehave.
Maybe it is more confusing than helpful.
I do not think that the names of time scale are considered
to be EU business by anyone in the EU -- the EU follow the
principle of subsidiarity which defers decisions with local
scope to the locals.
Time scale names are currently regulated only by the
member countries. For instance, countries with the same time
scale (eg Ireland, Britain, Portugal) have chosen different
names, and there is no chance that any EU directive will
"suggest" names.
The EU questionnaire is only about the application of
summer time, not about the names for winter and summer
times. By the way, names in Europe can be a very sensitive
matter anyway (think of Macedonian Winter Time MWT).
And the names "Central European Time",.. and acronyms "CET",..
designate time scales, not zones. It is just (bad) tzdb lingo
to use "zone" when a time scale is meant.
So I think the stakes of tzdb in the EU questionnaire
are restricted to request enough lead time between the
EU decision on a potential change, including the implementation
in the law of member countries, and the date of its coming
into force.
Michael Deckers.
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