Fear of desynchronization: Why doesn’t Europe abolish daylight saving time?

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s announcement that the debate on abolishing the seasonal time change will be resumed has brought a topic that resurfaces every spring and autumn back into the spotlight. This Sunday, Europeans will once again turn their clocks back one hour. The debate over whether to maintain or eliminate this practice remains stalled, pending evidence of its economic impact, a study that should have been carried out by the European Commission.

In recent years, several EU member states have proposed ending daylight saving time. However, governments have been unable to reach a consensus on their preferences and are aware that, without coordination, the common market would be harmed. The European Commission has promised in recent months to conduct an impact assessment study, but there has been no indication that such work has begun. Without consensus, countries will continue to readjust their clocks.

The issue gained renewed traction in 2018, when a public consultation showed that 84% of Europeans supported abolishing daylight saving time. In response, the European Commission proposed scrapping it the following year, seeking to demonstrate that Brussels could react swiftly to public demands. However, the proposal stalled a few months later: transport ministers demanded more time to debate its implications. The European Parliament took up the issue again in 2019 and voted to end daylight saving time starting in 2021. Once again, without the agreement of the European Union, the measure was never implemented.

According to José Ángel López, a researcher specializing in European Union institutions, this could be a good time to raise the issue again, as countries review these directives every five years. However, he warns, “the measure will require qualified majority support in the Council of the European Union.” In practice, this means that at least 15 countries — representing at least 65% of the EU population — must vote in favor to initiate the procedure that would allow the repeal of the directive in force since 2001, which establishes the current daylight saving time system.

The time of disagreement

The deadlock persists in the EU Council. “The problem isn’t Brussels, but the lack of coordination between states,” clarifies historian and international law expert Julio Guinea Bonillo. “Countries know that desynchronizing their timetables can lead to significant economic losses.”

Poland, during its 2025 EU Council presidency, attempted to revive the debate. In April, it proposed adopting a single time zone — summer time — with a biannual review. In June, it brought the issue back to the table in the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council. According to official information from the Polish government, the Commission then committed to preparing an impact analysis of the measure.

An EU spokesperson told this newspaper that “a study is being prepared to support decision-making, analyzing different implementation scenarios.” However, there is no confirmation from the European institutions that such a study has been initiated.

History of synchronization

Daylight saving time was first introduced during World War I: in 1916, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire adopted it to save fuel. The United Kingdom followed suit shortly after. The practice was abandoned at the end of the war, but became widespread again during World War II. In this context, dictator Francisco Franco, an ally of Hitler, moved Spanish time forward to synchronize it with Nazi Germany: on March 7, 1940, the Official State Gazette published the order establishing this change.

Since then, the Iberian Peninsula has been out of step with its geographical position. “Until 1940, our official time was the Greenwich Meridian, which is the time that truly corresponds to us,” notes Guinea Bonillo. France and Belgium share this anomaly, using Central European Time (UTC+1) despite being located in the UTC+0 time zone. Portugal, on the other hand, experimented with this time in the 1990s, but reversed its use due to public complaints that winter sunrises were too late. “It was a lesson in prudence for the Peninsula,” comments the historian.

The modern practice of daylight saving time was consolidated after the oil crisis of the 1970s, when Europe sought to save energy by making better use of sunlight. Faced with the ensuing time chaos, the seasonal change was harmonized throughout the EU: Directive 2000/84 stipulated that clocks would be adjusted on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October.

A more geoeconomic than geopolitical debate

The current debate is not an ideological issue, but a practical one. “We are not facing a geopolitical problem, but a geoeconomic one,” Guinea Bonillo summarizes. Eliminating daylight saving time would allow each country to choose its permanent time, but this freedom carries a risk: disrupting the synchronization of the internal market.

Sectors such as transportation, logistics, finance, software, and payroll depend on countries operating within a similar timeframe. For example, a lack of coordination in the abolition of daylight saving time between neighbors such as Spain, France, and Portugal could generate significant costs for businesses and citizens. “Coordination is essential,” Guinea Bonillo insists, “something the European Union is not always agile in.” Without it, he warns, the new borders would not be geographical, but temporal.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition