As usual and not to change anything, at two o'clock in the morning in the night from Saturday to Sunday, we will advance our clocks and our watches by 60 minutes: it will be three o'clock and we will therefore (theoretically) sleep "one hour less. », Shortening by as much the curfew to which tens of millions of French people are subjected.
However, we should not have continued this tradition this year.
This change of time twice a year (change to winter time on the last Sunday in October, to summer time on the last Sunday in March) is highly contested for its effect on biological rhythms, in particular by doctors or parents of children of school age.
Time change Le Parisien
At European level, where the time change regime was harmonized in 1980 - justified at the time by energy savings, the reality of which is debated - the European Commission proposed in September 2018 to abolish it ... in 2019. But finally, the European Parliament voted in March 2019 to postpone it to 2021, to be discussed with the Council of the EU.
Since then, the Covid-19 crisis has passed by there, and the file is in limbo of the commission ...
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Time change: overwhelmed by votes, online citizen consultation crashes
One of the main obstacles is that, among other things, countries must be encouraged to harmonize their choice of legal time, in order to avoid ending up with a patchwork of time zones between neighbors.
In France, we plebiscite the end of the time change
In France, an online consultation organized in 2019 by the European Affairs Committee of the National Assembly received more than two million responses, overwhelmingly (83.74%) in favor of ending the time change.
Over 60% of those who participated claimed to have had “a negative or very negative experience”.
As for the time to stay all year round, it was summer (in France UTC + 2) which was preferred by 59% of participants.
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The European Parliament decides to abandon the time change
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Little-known particularity of the current system: it does not concern the overseas territories, which never change time (with the exception of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, which is based on neighboring Canada).
Indeed, most of them are in latitudes where the differences in sunshine are low throughout the year, unlike in Europe.