EU Summer Time update

[Peter Ilieve]

The European Union bureaucracy has edged a step closer to a 7th Directive
on summer-time arrangements. I have the text of a Common Position ((EC No 9/94)
and a statement of the Council's reasons dated 4 March 94, reported
in the Official Journal of the EC, No. C 137/38--41.

Since I reported on the draft directive in March, 1998 has been removed
from the scope of the 7th directive and the introduction of a common
end date at the end of October has been brought forward to 1996 from 1997.
No actual dates have changed.

The dates again:

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


In the statement of reasons it said the Council had rejected an amendment
from the European Parliament relating to having a single timezone for
the whole EU, noting that the Commission had said it was beyond the
scope of the directive. It still looks unlikely to me that this idea,
put forward in the UK from time to time, will ever come to pass.


Normally each directive includes a provision that a new directive
will be in place on 1 Jan of the last year covered by the preceeding one.
This is always ignored, here we are in June and we still don't have
the directive promised for January. This Common Position breaks new
ground in that it tells the Commission to have proposals ready by 1 Jan 96,
so a new directive can be adopted by 1 Jan 97. We will have to wait
and see if this makes any difference.


I think this is the final step before the directive is adopted but the
Edinburgh EC Information Office could still give no guess as to when
that might be.


		Peter Ilieve		peter at memex.co.uk