350,000 people in Italy sign Ora Legale petition to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.
Italian lawmakers are set to debate a move to end the twice-yearly practice of changing clocks after an online petition secured more than 353,000 signatures.
The campaign, pushed by the Italian Society of Environment Energy (SIMA) and independent consumer lobby Consumerismo No Profit, is seeking to make Daylight Saving Time (Ora Legale) permanent, claiming the move would reduce high energy costs and improve people’s health.
A request for a fact-finding investigation, with the aim of kickstarting a parliamentary process to end Standard Time (Ora Solare) in Italy, will be presented to the Italian chamber of deputies on Monday.
If approved, the process will be completed by 30 June 2026, leading to a legislative proposal on permanent Daylight Saving Time, state broadcaster RAI News reports.
Petition
The petition is asking the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as the Italian government, to keep Daylight Saving Time all year long and abolish the time-change.
“The permanent transition to the Daylight Saving Time will allow us to gain an hour of sunlight and natural heat everyday and also, considering current gas prices, would determine for Italy a saving of energy consumption of about €1 billion in just the first two years”, the petition states.
Organisers estimate that the energy saved by making Daylight Saving Time permanent would also lead to greenhouses gases being cut by “200,000 tons of CO2 every year, with positive benefits for people’s health, in addition to economic savings thanks to the reduction of combustion of fossil fuels for lights and heat”.
Time-change
The time changes occur twice a year in European Union countries – on the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October – with the next change scheduled on 29 March 2026 when clocks will “spring forward” by one hour.
The practice dates back to more than a century, before the advent of electricity, and was designed to take full advantage of all the daylight hours during the working day.
However in recent years the time-change has become the subject of much debate in Europe.
In 2019 the European parliament approved a draft law to scrap daylight saving time at an EU level but the move was put on hold after being overshadowed by the covid pandemic.
Under the plan the 27 EU member states will be required to choose either permanent summer time or winter time but must co-ordinate their choices to minimise risk of economic disruption in cross-border trade.
There are currently three different time zones in the EU: two countries operate under Greenwich Mean Time (GMT): Ireland and Portugal, in addition to the UK; 17 have Central European Time (GMT+1) and eight have Eastern European Time (GMT+2).
The only country in Europe not to make the most of extra daylight hours during the summer is Iceland which stays on GMT all year round.
Italy has observed the clock changes every year since 1966, as well as from 1916-1920 and 1940-1948.
