Brussels cautious about Lithuania’s initiative to drop daylight-saving time

The statement came in comment of the initiative at the Lithuanian parliament and the government to revise the directive, which envisages annual introduction of daylight-saving time by member-states.

“The European Commission is currently examining the time switch issue in light of the existing data. Officials of the European Commission emphasize that that the objective of harmonizing the daylight-saving time on the EU level is to avoid problems, especially in fields of transport, logistics and energy, which would emerge from uncoordinated time shift,” the EC told BNS.

According to Brussels’ officials, the impact report of the DST directive prepared a decade ago concludes that the directive remains appropriate and allows saving energy. A similar conclusion was drawn during the 2014 survey conducted for the EC: if the European Union does not introduce DST in coordinated manner, both residents and companies would face inconveniences.

Lithuania’s parliament and government decided to open consultations with the European Commission and member-states on revision of the scheme to set clocks differently for the summer and the winter seasons.