What will it take for this to ACTUALLY happen? Every time change, I hear folks talk about how we should move to permanent DST, but nothing changes. I am tired of getting my hopes up.
Unfortunately, it was postponed once again because of the pandemic. The implementation plan is for every country to choose which timezone to stay in (summer or winter), and I guess now is not the time for nations to figure out between themselves which timezone to stay in.
No agreement gets implemented in a day and I find it perfectly reasonable for priorities to switch in an emergency (like a global pandemic).
I despise DST as much as 80% of the EU citizens who said it should be abolished in a survey in 2018, but I'd much rather have my legislators focus on the pandemic at the moment.
Although it should be noted that that survey wasn't exactly representative: Participants were self-selected, and participation levels varied wildly between countries. Curiously enough, around two third of the responses came from Germany, despite it accounting for only around 15 % of the EU population (pre-Brexit).
Having each country independently decide about the time zone sounds nice, but is of course a ridiculously stupid idea in the real world. At least some minimal constraints need to be enforces as in:
- no timezone differential when you go in north-south direcion - timezone offset increases monotonic when you move east - avoid to have more than 1-hour timezone steps - and of course try to keep countries in the same timezone, which work closest together.
>Last year the European Parliament voted to abolish the time shifts, but the member states of the European Union have yet to agree on how to implement the decision.