Posted October 30, 2018

The European Commission has proposed to discontinue daylight saving time (DST), effective October 2019. Several governments and organizations have since expressed concerns about such a tight timeline for the far-reaching change. CalConnect shares these concerns and recommends the European Commission extend the timelines stated in the proposal.

CalConnect is intimately aware of potential repercussions of such a change with short notice. We are comprised of technology vendors and end-user organizations focused on the areas of date and time, calendaring, and scheduling, as well as time zone issues.

Practical experience from similar changes in the past indicates that such changes pose serious risks to the accuracy of stored time-related data and schedules (such as meetings, appointments, flights and transit schedules). Therefore, we recommend providing a transition period of at least one year (12 months) after the final decision for the change has been made.

CalConnect will host a public workshop at its next conference in Zürich in early February, and has just launched a public mailing list for the discussion of best practices for planning new time zone changes.

The full advisory notice can be found at

CC Adv EU DST Advisory Notice.pdf