Euro MPs timely vote focuses on flexibility

Date: 21/11/1996

THE European Parliament will be asked to back moves next week which would sanction the end of a uniform summer- time applied throughout the Union.

With the current EU-wide rules on introducing and ending summer-time due to run out next year, MEPs on the Parliament's transport committee are proposing that an element of flexibility be introduced into the new arrangements.

They have tabled amendments to be voted on by the full Parliament next Wednesday (27 November) which would mean that from 1998, the application of summer-time would no longer be compulsory for EU members.

But in a bid to limit the confusion which would inevitably result from different summer- time zones, they have suggested that differences between adjoining Union countries should not exceed one hour.

“The scheme is designed to give member states greater freedom. Next year they will have to apply summer-time, but afterwards under these proposals they would have a choice,” explained one parliamentary source.

The initiative could end almost two decades of putting clocks forward by one hour during the summer months in Union member states, and is a direct result of intense lobbying against the procedure in France.

The French government is currently studying the findings of a report it commissioned which recommends abolition of the scheme.

No other EU member supports such a move and Italian MEP Spalato Bellere, who has prepared the Parliament's summer-time report, has described any French withdrawal from the scheme as “bad for France and bad for Europe”.

The European Commission is also opposed to any retreat from the system which operated for the first time this year under which all EU members put their clocks forward at the end of March and back an hour at the end of October.

Previously, the UK and Ireland had operated summer- time for one month longer than their continental partners. But this inevitably caused confusion for international travel and business arrangements.

France's neighbours are unlikely to take kindly to a break in the summer-time ranks, and ironically it would also mean that Strasbourg - the official seat of the European Parliament - would be one hour behind the other two major EU centres of Brussels and Luxembourg for six months of every year.