The Parliament votes in favour of letting the Member States decide about their winter or summer time.

The European Parliament today adopted their final position on the Commission proposal to discontinue the to end the biannual change of clocks that currently takes place in every Member State of the EU at the end of March and the end of October.

The ALDE shadow supports the rapporteur’s proposal with a start date for 2021. However, it will be up to the Member States to decide on their standard time and if they don’t agree on a reasonable scheme that will not affect the internal market, then the European Commission will not agree to this. A coordination mechanism will be put in place in order to analyse the consequences on the internal market. It is important to take into account that this proposal is the outcome of a citizen’s initiative signed by almost 5 million citizens. Our shadow is therefore keen to secure a position from the Parliament’s side as a starting point for negotiations with the Council in order to provide an answer to this petition.

MEP Izaskun Bilbao Barandica, shadow rapporteur for this file said:

“Following this roadmap we have to demonstrate to the four million six hundred thousand citizens that participated in this public consultation that the European institutions listen, that they are close, that they work effectively seriously on the citizen’s concerns and try to play the role that they touches: to inform, to moderate between opposing positions and to decide to try to set balanced positions transparently. If by this way of doing we generate trust and proximity, the time that we have dedicated to finish this report, it will be gold.”

More info: david.vidal@europarl.europa.eu