It is official: winter time 2020 has started! Overnight our clocks went back an hour as daylight saving time came to an end. This means that today it feels like we have an ‘extra hour’ and no doubt your system will need to adjust. It also means the start of longer evenings as the darkness draws in earlier.
Our clocks are now on standard time
Standard time is often used to describe the time of year when a country is not on ‘daylight saving time’ (DST). The term winter time is commonly used to replace standard time throughout Europe. Summer time is used to describe the DST-period. [Source: timeanddate]
Standard time is also known as winter time.
The standard time debate
The debate on how useful daylight saving time is has been going on for years. It was originally introduced with the idea to save on lighting and energy costs. On the other hand, changing the time can disturb people’s biorhythm, especially in children and animals.
The EU countries are still considering which time they want to stick to: will it be standard time or daylight saving time? The Dutch government has not yet decided which time the Netherlands will follow.
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Note: It is not 100% clear yet that the EU will indeed have abolished DST by 2021, as negotiations have been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic; see here. It remains to be seen whether we have yet seen the end to our current seasonal system where we have to remember which way to put the clocks, i.e. ‘spring forward’ and ‘fall back’.
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