Goodbye summer time? There is someone in Strasbourg who would like it, even if the initiative, however curious, will probably turn out to be a boutade. The time change, which occurs twice a year (the last Sunday in March switches to daylight saving time, the last Sunday in October returns to solar time), according to the promoters of the resolution which is voted on Thursday 8 February by European Parliament, “as well as uncomfortable can also cause damage to public health, such as malaise, tiredness and irritability”.
The promoters of the initiative, mainly MEPs from Northern and Eastern Europe, therefore ask the Commission, in a non-binding manner, to "conduct an in-depth evaluation" of the Community directive on summer time, which this year will start on Sunday 25 March and which objectively has practically no chance of being really abolished. "Disturbing the internal clock of individuals twice a year damages health," said Finnish Heidi Hautala, citing dozens of scientific studies, while some, like MEP Anne Berber, have asked for it to be left to each individual country the faculty of being able to decide how to behave.
At the moment there are around 70 countries in the world, many of which belong to the European Union but not only, which adopt this system which aims to grant citizens as many hours of natural light as possible and above all which has allowed, from 2004 to today according to Terna's surveys, of save 1,4 billion in electricity consumption, equal to 567 million kilowatt hours (the average annual electricity consumption of over 200 thousand families, or for example of the whole of Sardinia), a value corresponding to lower CO2 emissions into the atmosphere by 320 thousand tons.
