Most of Europe will move to winter time tomorrow and also abolish DST and I have the same feelings about it as you. I prefer darker mornings than evenings, as I've never been an early riser.

To clarify, the European Commission had a public consultation on DST[1]. The response was strongly in favour of ending the clock changes, and furthermore favoured permanent DST. The EC has called on member states to come up with an appropriate way of accommodating the public’s preference, telling them to coordinate so that time differences across borders are kept to a sensible minimum.

No decision has been made yet to either abolish DST, or move the clock forward one hour permanently, and it might not happen at all. The member states are supposed to reply before next summer, so that the switch to DST next spring could be the last time changing clocks in Europe.

[1]http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-5302_en.htm

>To clarify, the European Commission had a public consultation on DST

A public consultation, conducted online, to which 4 million people (less that 1% of the population of Europe) answered. 3 million of those were from Germany.

I'm living in the EU. I go online and read various news items every day.

I'm baffled about the fact I somehow managed to miss that there was an official poll / call for direct citizen feedback on such a topic I personally care about.

I might have bit a bit distracted ... or the whole poll might not have been conducted particularly well.

Overrepresentation of a particular country might be a tell tale sign of local media coverage that was effectively done only in one country.

The EU Commission launches hundreds of Consultations, which the vast majority never hear about: https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations_en

I'm not sure if they actually pretend these are representative of the general public opinion.

It was on the HN front page for a few hours when it launched.

Nobody except Germans knew about a poll. Seriously, why?

Because DST is used as THE standard Anti-Brussels rhetorical Point it was all over the news for weeks in Germany.

Thank you. It also implies that DST is politiced in Germany the way I did not expected, it is interesting.

And?

It looked like it was about to happen now or in 6 months (last switch) but Austria has asked for a delay to consider how it should implement it and Belgium and the Netherlands are following with that.

So basically I have now lost all hope that we are ever going to drop the switch in this century.

So much for public consultation and Europe being an oppressive administration force (some say it was made on purpose to highlight individual states unwillingness to cooperate).

I had the feeling more states agreed already. In Romania we'll switch to winter time tomorrow and stick to it.

You've never been an early riser so you prefer to have to wake up one hour early forever?

Yes, because I will enjoy more day time. I never wake up early enough to be dark outside, so that was never a problem for me, but there are days in the winter when the sunset is just a few hours after I wake up.

For your location that may be an issue, but in other parts of Europe keeping summer time all year around will mean the sun doesn't rise until nearly 10am. The real issue here is such a large location is in the same timezone. The sun rises over 1 1/2 hours earlier in the East of Poland compared to the West of Spain, even though they are in the same timezone.

People who want the solar day to start at 1AM must love languages like SQL that start at index 1. But hey, at least it's consistent with year 1.

that's exactly what's already proposing Slovak ministry of labor meaning you will have sunrise in summer at 3:30 AM, despite out of Slovak participants in survey 53% voted for permanent DST and in whole EU survey it was even more favourable, let's hope for EU wide agreement on permanent DST, otherwise i will be rather switching time twice a year, despite voting against it in survey

Your timezone does not dictate how dark your evenings are. The days have exactly the same amount of daylight regardless of what numbers you choose to label the hours with.

Quite a few people work relative to market trading hours and customary times to hold earnings calls and roadshows. Sales people work around their store business hours. Schools have fixed schedules. Hours sadly dictate schedules for most people

Tangent: what's the purpose of closing the financial markets overnight? Why not just have them open all the time?

It sure makes for more dramatic price graphs.

Because market participants (i.e. brokers) need to 'mark to market'. That is, they need to transfer the net of their gains and losses to counter-parties. This occurs after the market close. To have continuously trading markets would require changing the supporting systems and regulations that support this.

Surely thats a regulation thing, not an actual desire by the market.

That just shifts the question around. Why, as king, would you want to make sure that there's a period every day when no one is supposed to trade financial instruments?

Because the king doesn't want to take the responsiblity of overlooking the transactions everyday: just when he feels like it.

How does the one relate to the other?

Yours might not, but mine does. Evenings for me are from ~5pm to bedtime. Unfortunately they're determined by the clock, not the sun.

The point is saying summer time is better than winter time regardless you where you live is meaningless. Depending where you live, the offset with the sun is different.

In France for example I'd rather we stick with winter time all year round, because I don't care if it's dark at 6pm on winter but doing your morning commute during the night is highly depressing.

FYI, I found that sunlight appearing at ~4am and disappearing long before dinner, like it does during the winter in places like the riviera Maya or Hungary, is even less fun. I'd pick a late sunrise like in Western France or Spain over an early sunset in a heartbeat.

> The point is saying summer time is better than winter time regardless you where you live is meaningless

True, but who said this? The grandparent only said that they were happy about the decision in their location. No one stated that summer time is better than winter time regardless of where you live.

One point about abandoning DST is that it does re-open these questions. It seems a bit crazy that Madrid and Warsaw are on the same time zone, and perhaps they will get around to fixing this while they're fiddling.

You're talking about the diurnal cycle, but what we call evenings are defined by social convention and certainly do get darker after the November time shift.

The easiest way to shift the schedule of everyone in an area is just to shift the time.

But you don't need to shift everyone else's schedule, only your own. The easiest way to shift your own schedule is just to shift it.

Yeah, I will just shift my kids classes in school and clubs unilaterally an hour down. Or opening hours in shop I want to go to. And move meeting and buss needed to go to places and what not.

And shift or service worker will just come an hour later, no big deal.

If shops and schools are sane, they will adjust the schedule according to daylight. No point keeping a shop open at 7am if there's no shoppers, because they're all sound asleep.

Works great unless you need to live in a society with other people and other schedules.

The hours I spend at work, on the other hand...

I propose we solve the obesity crisis by shifting all weights by 10kg down.

I don't particularly agree with the OP but I hope you realize that mass/weight has a clear 0 point, whereas time modulus one day does not.

Dividing by 10 solves that problem and improves the results.

The timezone does dictate what part of the day we generally call "evening" though.