Do not forget: Clocks advance one hour in the morning on Sunday

Portugal will advance clocks one hour early on Sunday, kicking off daylight saving time, says the Lisbon Astronomical Observatory (OAL).

In the early hours of March 31, on Sunday, in mainland Portugal and in the Autonomous Region of Madeira, at 1:00 a.m., the clocks must be advanced 60 minutes, to 2:00 p.m.

In the Autonomous Region of the Azores, the change will be made at midnight, 00h00, from Sunday to 01h00.

The legal time changed again on October 27, marking the switch to the winter regime, delaying the clocks one hour.

At the end of August last year, the President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, announced that the institution would formally propose the end of the time change in the European Union, following a non-binding survey at Community level, according to which more of 80% of respondents said they prefer to keep the same time at all times.

In October, the prime minister, António Costa, defended that Portugal should maintain the current two-hour regime and have a summertime and a winter time, considering that “the criterion of science is the only criterion.”

On Tuesday, the European Parliament voted in favor of the proposal to end the biannual change in Strasbourg, but only in 2021, and not earlier this year, as initially proposed by the European Commission.

After the European Parliament adopted its position by adopting a report by the Committee on Transport with 410 votes in favor, 192 against and 51 abstentions, it is now necessary for the Member States to reach a common position within the Council of the European Union, and then the proposal for a directive (Community law) should be agreed between the two institutions.

The text adopted in the Chamber, drawn up by the Transport Committee of the European Parliament, maintains that the dates indicated in the European Commission proposal for the abolition of the seasonal adjustment of clocks are premature, since Member States must “have the time and the possibility to hold their own public consultations and impact assessments in order to better understand the implications of the abolition of seasonal time changes in all regions. ”

According to the European Parliament, it is up to each Member State to decide whether to apply summer time or winter time, but the European Union countries should, however, coordinate among themselves the choice of their legal hours in order to safeguard the proper functioning of the internal market, and shall notify that decision to Brussels by 1 April 2020 at the latest.

The report proposes that the last mandatory change for summer time should occur on the last Sunday in March 2021. Member States that opt for winter time would still hit clocks once again on the last Sunday of October 2021. After that date, seasonal time changes would no longer be possible.

The current time-change regime is governed by a Community law of 2000, which provides that each year clocks are respectively advanced and delayed one hour on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October, marking the beginning and end of summertime.