Who keeps the clock?

Twice a year, in the dead of night, when we move our clocks an hour forward or back, we are not really playing with time but with an illusion of our own invention. Most governments now agree that this artificial pendulum swing has outlived its usefulness. But the real quarrel breaks out when the question is asked: "Which hour will we keep?"

When the European Union put this rule, in place since 2001, to a public consultation in 2018, an overwhelming 84 percent of the 4.6 million respondents wanted the clock changes to stop.1source 1 Although the European Parliament voted in 2019 to end the practice by 2021, the political chessboard among member states remains deadlocked. Imagine it: if one country chooses summer daylight and its neighbour opts for winter mornings, the two could end up an hour apart, and the map of Europe could turn into a patchwork of time zones.1source 1

Russia acted as a laboratory for this dilemma. It moved the clocks forward in 2011 and left them there; but endless summer time did not last, and a law passed in July 2014 set the clocks back an hour for good, this time to permanent winter time.2source 2 Across the ocean, the United States Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022 to make summer time permanent, only for the bill to gather dust in the House of Representatives and lapse.3source 3 The medical world raises a serious objection: the American Academy of Sleep Medicine argues for permanent standard time, which it says matches the body clock more closely, and points to more heart events and road accidents in the days after the spring change.4source 4

Brazil and Mexico simply ended the practice: Brazil in 2019, after its energy ministry found it no longer saved much electricity, and Mexico in 2022, by a vote of its Senate.5source 5 6source 6 It seems that stopping the change is everyone's shared wish; deciding whether to bid farewell to dark winter mornings or long, golden summer evenings is where the roads part.