THE EU COMMISSION has recommended the abolition of daylight savings and it could come into force as soon as 2021.

Ireland South MEP Deirdre Clune said she welcomed the news and said that the practice was a “relic of a bygone era”. 

The Commission will be proposing that when we move the clocks forward on the last Sunday in March 2021 we won’t be moving the clocks forward or backwards anymore after that.

It will take nearly three years because of the various channels the legislation needs to pass through. 

First it will go through the European Parliament – then it will be sent to each individual member state to vote on.

Clune said: “Having brighter evenings in winter would lead to improved outcomes for road safety as the roads are statistically more dangerous from the hours of 4-7pm. There are obvious economic benefits such as reduced energy consumption because of less need for artificial light in the evenings with a consequent reduction in CO2 emissions. Brighter evenings in winter would have a positive benefit for public health.”

Summertime arrangements in the EU require that the clocks are changed twice per year in order to cater for the changing patterns of daylight and to take advantage of the available daylight in a given period.

 The majority of the EU Member States have a long tradition of summertime arrangements, most of which date back as far as the First and Second World Wars or to the oil crisis in the 1970s.

At the time, summertime arrangements were mainly designed to save energy. However, there have also been other motivations, such as road safety, increasing leisure opportunities stemming from longer daylight during evenings or simply to align national practices to those of neighbours or main trading partners.

Finland has asked that the time switch be abandoned and Lithuania has called for a review of the current system in order to take into account regional and geographical differences.