HELSINKI, BRUSSELS (Reuters) — Finland has called on the European Union to scrap its twice-yearly switch of clocks to daylight saving time.
In Brussels, however, the EU executive showed little sign of haste to comply, confirming only that a long-term review of its 2001 summer time directive was still going on.
A study for the European Commission in 2014 found the overwhelming majority of member states were happy with the current arrangements.
The problem is that in Helsinki, most northerly of the EU’s national capitals, there is less than six hours of daylight in late December. So politicians have argued that moving clocks forward and back by an hour in March and October has disrupted sleep and work and could cause long-term health problems.
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The country’s EU ministerial committee discussed the matter on Jan. 26 and Transport Minister Anne Berner tweeted: “The government has decided to propose abolition of daylight saving.
“Our objective is to abandon the changing of clocks uniformly within the EU. Member states should jointly agree whether to move permanently to winter or to summer time.”
Like neighbours across the Baltic, Finland also shares an inconvenience of the time difference changing at its borders with non-EU Russia, Belarus and Ukraine — they all gave up daylight saving after a decision taken by Moscow in 2011.
The practice gained popularity in many countries during the energy crises of the 1970s as a means of saving power and money by effectively shifting daylight from the sleepy early hours to the busy evening.
To end variations in when clocks changed, the EU standardized a policy in the 1990s by which all member states now must move clocks an hour forward at 0100 GMT on the last Sunday in March and an hour back on the last Sunday in October.
