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Comment by FearNotDaniel | Hacker News Reader

I don't have a strong opinion on whether we're better off with or without the seasonal time change. But I don't like the idea of individual member states opting in or out, which is what this ruling allows.

I've lived the past few years in a border town where many people will live in Germany and commute to Austria, or live in Austria but do their regular shopping in Germany, or regularly go on weekend mountain hikes that may cross the border multiple times. Hopefully the authorities are smart enough to avoid the kind of situation where the two regions would end up in different time zones for half the year and all the ensuing confusion over bus and train times, opening hours and so on.

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> two regions would end up in different time zones for half the year

AIUI, every pair of countries will (like now) either always be in the same time zone or always be in different ones. Daylight Savings Time is being abolished; the choice is whether the permanent time zone will be the current summer one or the current winter one. Germany and Austria, being closely connected and at simular longitudes will probably choose the same one.

Currently Germany shares a timezone with all of it's neighbours. Most Germans seem to think they would prefer UTC+2; there would probably be no reason in that case for Germany's eastern neighbours (including Austria) to go to UTC+1. It's Germany's western neighbours that might end up on a different timezone. Certainly permanent UTC+2 seems crazy for Spain (which is geographically in the UTC zone); France and the Benelux countries are more of a toss-up.

How is this any different than various people bordering Germany thinking they can just pop in for some shopping, only to discover it's Sunday and pretty much everything's closed?

Maybe the result of countries being able to fiddle with DST is going to be silly, but it's a big stretch to think that it's something the EU must centrally enforce as an economic union.

Think about what time change does to hospitals and other critical services. Many systems, but not all are based on UTC and at some point the information needs to be interfaced to a human with the expectation of clocks being a certain way.

I think you misunderstood that bit, see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19491551

Well yes, I believed the BBC reporter's description of the proposal instead of bothering to read the source document. That's thankfully a bit less ludicrous than what the article suggested.

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