Could you spare a minute or two for a few timely changes?

Date: 03/10/1996

Not for the first time, France is on the verge of throwing Europe into chaos.

Thirty years after the empty chair policy, Paris has proposed the empty hour policy, the unilateral abolition of the difference between winter and summer time.

Within six months, the French will have made a choice which could turn cross-border commuters into time-travellers, adjusting their watches at the frontiers as they move into the past or, indeed, the future.

A review panel which is now studying the issue will choose either to stay on Greenwich Mean Time plus one hour, which is French winter time, or Greenwich Mean Time plus two hours, which is French summer time.

Whatever the decision, it will leave France's mainland EU partners adrift at some part of the year or another.

Haven't the French heard of the single market? Have they no consideration for other people?

The chairman of the review panel, François-Michel Gonnot, is a mean man when talking about Mean Time. “The choice of time is a national choice, not a European choice. Each government is allowed to choose the time of its own country,” he insists.

And so France is prepared to throw cross-border train and plane timetables into confusion. Cross-border workers passing into France every day will always be an hour late - or, possibly, an hour early.

But Voicebox can now reveal that the French move is, in more ways than one, untimely.

For a European Parliament committee, working in conjunction with an expert group of horologists, has been meeting in secret for weeks. Its mission: the creation of an entirely new system of time to take the European Union into the next century.

Inevitably, the committee has been working round a clock which may be about to change beyond all recognition.

Voicebox has obtained a copy of the first draft proposals. What follows are the key passages of what must be one of the most audacious, forward-thinking own-initiative plans ever to come from our elected representatives.

“Proposal for the Introduction of European Standard Time (EST):

whereas A - the current system of time is untidy and inefficient;

whereas B - the 24-hour clock still confuses everybody, particularly, for some reason, at 1600 hours, which is frequently mistaken for 6pm;

whereas C - some people complain they have too much time on their hands and others say there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done;

whereas D - a new system of time can be proven to change everyone's lives for the better;

Calls upon the European Commission and the Council of Ministers to:

1 - Scrap Europe's current system of time, abolishing the

24-hour day, the seven-day week, the four-week month and the twelve-month year;

2 - Replace them with a simpler, more logical metric system, which everyone can understand;

3 - Introduce with immediate effect a ten-month year, a ten-day week and a ten-hour day;

4 - Extend hours from 60 minutes to 100 minutes, creating a new day slightly shorter than the old one;

5 - Extend weeks to ten days, which will be 80 minutes shorter than the existing week, a loss of one hour twenty minutes in old time, but less than an hour EST;

6 - Extend a month to five weeks and reduce a year to 50 weeks;

7 - Establish under the new time criteria a charter of workers' rights setting out the 30-hour maximum working week, the six-day working week, and the minimum four-week annual holiday.

8 - Set up a tic toc working group to study the concomitant changes required in clocks, watches, timetables, etc.

Explanatory note: - The introduction of EST will mean that the working day will be shorter, but the working week longer. Anomalies such as the calendar month will disappear. Clocks will obviously only need ten numerals, calibrated in ten-minute segments. The principle of the 24-hour clock system will be retained where desired, except that 2000 hours will become midnight.

The impact on daily life will be two-fold: working time will increase, improving productivity and output, but leisure time will also rise.

The norm will be the six-day working week, with four days off, based on a five-hour day. This amounts to 3,000 minutes, compared with the current 2,400 on the basis of a five-day week and eight hours per day.

With four days off, albeit shorter days than before, no workers will begrudge the extra. And those entitled to a one-hour lunch break will have 40 minutes more. Whereas the current executive working lunch can sometimes take three hours, under the new regime it can be despatched in less than two hours without any loss of actual time.

The psychological benefits of EST cannot be overlooked.

All journey times will be reduced. For example, the minimum cross-Channel-ferry journey between France and the UK is currently 75 minutes, or one hour and a quarter. Under the new system, the journey will be completed in only three-quarters of an hour. This will increase the general public's sense of having an efficient and well-run transport network.

People will also age more slowly - a year will be 6,160 minutes longer, or just over six days more.

Naturally there will be hiccups in the early stages of EST.

These changes cannot be introduced overnight. Or even during the day, which will be officially set as six hours or 600 minutes, equivalent to ten hours of old time. The committee advises that for six months at least, or only five months under the new regime, both systems operate in parallel.

So, for instance, the expression “I'll be back in an hour” will become “I'll be back in 60 minutes old time or 100 minutes EST.”

Bus, train and plane timetables will list existing journey times and ESTimated journey times.

We believe that this new system will remove all anomalies. It will appeal to those who wish to be allowed to work longer hours, because under the new system hours will be longer, in fact two-thirds longer than the old ones. And it will appeal to those who wish to enforce a 48-hour working week, because the working norm will become 30 hours.

Under the new regime, working hours may fall, but productivity will almost double per week. Holidays will be longer, commuting time, as expressed in segments of an hour, will be shorter.

The committee believes that this is the first occasion since time began that such a thing has been attempted.

It urges the institutions to recognise that a new century is not only a time for change, but a change for time.”