TIME CHANGE WINTER 2022. A transition to winter time awaits us in October 2022, despite the start, in spring 2019, of a suppression of the time change within the EU. Date and time of the transition to winter time, instructions… Linternaute.com explains everything.
[Mis à jour le 9 septembre 2022 à 16h40] THE QUESTION OF THE MOMENT – Is the end of the time change coming soon? As a reminder, 84% of respondents to a public consultation by the European Commission launched in the summer of 2018 within the EU… had said they were in favor of the abolition of the time change (more than 4.6 million of responses). During a consultation organized by the National Assembly in France at the beginning of 2019, it was also the end of the time change that was widely supported, by 83.71% of French people. The European Commission had therefore presented a draft directive on this point, adopted in March 2019 by the European Parliament.
The said draft directive provided for the abolition of the time change from 2021. To do this, each Member State had to decide between winter time and summer time. The European Parliament had also pleaded for coordination between the Member States and the European Commission so that the application of permanent hours (winter and summer) in the various countries does not disrupt the functioning of the internal market.
The directive was to be adopted by the Council at the end of 2020, then transposed by the Member States, underlines the official site Public Life. Only, because of the health crisis linked to Covid-19, then subsequently the upheavals caused by the war in Ukraine, the text in question on the end of the time change is no longer on the agenda ” and should not be discussed in the near future”, concludes the site of the French administration.
What does the 2022 winter time change look like?
You can already note it in your diary, there will indeed be a time change in France next winter. Despite the many echoes evoking the end of this measure, there remains a change of time in 2022, and several others in the years to come (see our explanations at the end of the time change). Do you have a pen, mouse or smartphone in hand? The next winter time change date to note is the last weekend of October 2022. More precisely, the change to winter time takes place on the night of Saturday 29 to Sunday 30 October 2022.
As every year, winter time involves artificially setting back one hour in the middle of the night. A kind of leap to the past that artificially allows you to get an extra hour of sleep, but brings more darkness at the end of the day, on the eve ofHalloween. The change to winter time also reduces France’s difference with solar time: this difference goes from two hours (GMT+2) during summer time to one hour (GMT+1) at winter time.
The time change has been in place in mainland France for more than 45 years, i.e. 1976, with a key objective: “to save electricity”. However, the effectiveness of the device has long been disputed and the measurement of the double seasonal time change, currently harmonized within the EU, must soon be abandoned. The end of the time change has been decided by the European Parliament, but the removal of the measure should still be pending. Postponed by the Covid-19 health crisis, the end of the time change will not be possible before 2024.
The 2022 winter time change will take place on the night of Saturday October 29 to Sunday October 30, 2022, with a setback of 3 to 2 am. Every year since 1976, the date of the transition to winter time has thus been at the end of October. The time change makes us more precisely switch to winter time during the last (full) weekend of October.
This nuance of date easily creates confusion: in 2020, what could seem to be the last weekend of October was thus, in reality, straddling November, which had, that year, placed the change of hour on the previous weekend, that of October 24 and 25. Last year, however, the time change took place on the very last days of the month, October 30 and 31.
During the winter time change, at 3 a.m., you always have to bring back the hands of your old watch or your clock ancestral back one hour. At 3 a.m., the whole of France will therefore return to 2 a.m. Of course, the smartphones as all connected devices switch to winter time automatically, without any intervention required. The maneuver artificially gains an hour of sleep, but also loses an hour of natural light at the end of the day, in addition to the natural and progressive shortening of the days as the sun approaches. winter solsticein December.
The seasonal time change has existed for more than 45 years and thus aims to save electrical energy by adapting to daylight hours. While it is now applied by all EU Member States and 70 countries in total, this mandatory time change has also been hotly debated for years. Its detractors point above all to too limited energy gains and negative effects on health, sleep and road safety. Several important votes on the time change have already taken place and a process is underway to put an end to this measure.
In February 2018, the European Parliament polled EU citizens about the time change. Among the 4.6 million Europeans who responded, 84% said they were in favor of the removal of the measure at the time. But it took another year until, in March 2019, the European Parliament adopted a majority project to end it. A deadline had even been set to put the time change in the closet: October 2021. The Covid health crisis, but also the political crisis that followed Brexit in 2020 went through this, as did the hesitations of European leaders, delaying the abolition of the alternation between winter time and summer time.
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Harmonization between the Member States seems indeed perilous. The European Union knows three time zones today and an EU directive suggests letting each state choose whether or not to abolish the time change, and then switch to either winter time or standard time. permanent summer. For the process to move forward, the countries of the European Union must therefore succeed in harmonizing their choice of legal time. Objective: to avoid the patchwork effect of time zones between neighbours. However, as EELV MEP Karima Delli lamented to Sud Ouest last year, several southern European states are “not particularly in favor of the end of the time change” unlike Northern European countries, each having “their idea”.
The European Union directive acknowledging the end of the time change has been validated by the European Parliament in March 2019, but it must also be done by the Council of the European Union, which unites the representatives of the different EU Member States. However, the subject has not been put on the agenda by France, which chaired the institution from January 1 to June 30, 2022. It is not expected that the Czech Republic, which chairs the Council between July and December 2022, no longer make it a priority. Due to the current blockage, it seems extremely difficult to envisage an end to the time change for 2023. The end of the time change could take place in 2024, if only the process, which has been blocked for more than four years, is relaunched. .
As far as France is concerned, a citizen consultation, conducted with 2.1 million participants via the National Assembly websitealso gave in March 2019 a clear preference (83.71%) for the end of the time change and even to stay permanently on summer time.