It was surprising that Pedro Sanchez started the week with an issue that was not at all in the media spotlight. He announced this Monday that he will request at the imminent European Council that the community legislative mechanism be reactivated to end the seasonal time change.
Coinciding with the week in which the clocks will be turned back to enter winter time, he defended that “changing the time twice a year no longer makes sense”, given that “it barely helps save energy and has a negative impact on health.”
It is true that the initial justification for energy savings has become outdated. And it has been questioned by the majority of studies, which agree that setting the clock forward or back an hour has a minimal impact on consumption.
Sánchez is also right when invoking the health argument.
It is also proven that the disconnection between our lifestyle habits and circadian rhythms and solar hours has detrimental effects on health. Which has led some experts to advocate eliminating the time adjustment and maintaining the winter time adjustment.
But also today other scientists, such as those consulted by EL ESPAÑOL, who oppose the elimination of the biannual change.
Among the arguments, they cite territorial differences, which would mean that, in the absence of this synchronizing mechanism, the most western and eastern communities would wake up either too early or too late.
Besides, Spain is a special case, since it is not in the time zone that would correspond to it (that of Western Europe). The issue here has a cultural and conventional nature, as it is an exceptionally sunny country that has later hours than the rest of the continent.
Intuitively, what is best for citizens and a service economy like ours is that there are as many hours of sunshine as possible.
So there are plenty of reasons both for and against. But what is clear is that This is not a social outcry or an issue that worries citizens today..
Furthermore, as EL ESPAÑOL reports, the EU will not support the elimination of the time change that Sánchez wants to lead.
The corresponding file has been on hold since 2018, when the European Parliament approved ending the seasonal readjustment. The reform was paralyzed because the member states have been unable to achieve the qualified majority necessary to move it forward.
Because, as there are multiple perspectives from which to analyze the impact of the time change, many Member States are undecided about which schedule to choose.
In fact, not even Sánchez himself has clarified whether he is in favor of Spain staying permanently on summer or winter time.
Furthermore, although the official position of the community government is to end the biannual adjustment, lThe EU does not have the power to impose a single time zone.
Therefore, what the Member States fear is that, by virtue of the freedom of each country to choose summer time or winter time, a chaos of time zones will end up occurring in Europe (on a continent that already has three), which would be harmful to the common market.
And although the Commission is interested in harmonizing these differences, the head of Energy has recognized that the issue “is not among the main priorities of the EU’s political agenda.”
So that, If there are no signs of it prospering, why does Sánchez reopen a debate on day and night that it has not reopened in Europe either, where only Poland and Finland support the initiative that the president wants to lead?
It seems that Sánchez is willing to argue about even the time change as long as other topics that are less harmful to him are talked about.
When there is not the slightest possibility of a government initiative, and in the context of progress in the investigations into the corruption cases that surround him, Sánchez has now decided, in a pertinent metaphor, to try to cover the sun with his finger.