Incredulity at French plan to abandon summer-time

Date: 12/09/1996

By Michael Mann

ONE major problem stands in the way of French Prime Minister Alain Juppé's proposal to abandon summer-time. It is illegal.

European Commission officials were caught off guard by Juppé's request for National Assembly deputy François-Michel Gonnot to examine the pros and cons of the idea, but insist such a move would run counter to EU law.

“It would be illegal if they were to do it. To us it looks like a Juppé one-man show. He seems to have come under pressure from a persuasive minority lobby group,” commented one.

The incredulity felt within Directorate-General VII (transport), which is responsible for legislation covering time, has been heightened by the lack of strong resistance to harmonisation from member states in recent Council of Ministers' debates on the issue.

Senior diplomats had been hoping to polish off their discussions soon on new legislation to replace the existing directive, which expires at the end of 1997, to allow transport ministers to reach a formal accord by the end of this year on maintaining the newly-harmonised system.

Although both France and Portugal have expressed some concerns, nobody expected Juppé's bombshell.

Under the seventh directive agreed in May 1994 with French assent, all EU countries will change to winter time simultaneously on the last weekend in October. The UK, Ireland and Portugal will remain an hour behind the rest of the EU, with Greece an hour ahead.

For the moment, Juppé has merely asked Gonnot to consider the twin options of remaining on Greenwich Mean Time plus either one hour or two. His office has stressed that no decision has been made.

Considering the unequivocal response from the Commission, there has been some amusement that Gonnot's brief also stresses that any changes must be integrated into “the European situation”. Some wonder if France is attempting to manoeuvre its allies into rethinking the concept of summer-time for the whole continent.

If this is so, the Commission will point to the recent study it commissioned from British consultants ADAS which found that the summer-time regime brought “substantial economic benefits” for personal leisure, public health, tourism and road safety.

Flagging up his initiative, Juppé suggested that the change in the clocks every spring and autumn was not understood by the majority of the people and brought no obvious economic benefit.

But others have warned of the chaos which could ensue if travellers had to change their watches every time they passed through France, as well as of the potential losses for businesses having to deal with partners operating from a different time zone.

Commission officials also reject arguments that time changes work perfectly effectively in the US.

“America is on a completely different scale,” commented one.

French lobby group ACHE (the association against summer-time) claims that a recent survey showed two-thirds of the public supported an end to the current system.