In Italy summer time could become permanent: today, Monday 17 November, the proposal for a fact-finding investigation will be presented to the Chamber of Deputies, accompanied by 352 thousand signatures, promoted by Italian Society of Environmental Medicine (SIMA), by Consumerismo Non profit and by the deputy Andrea Barabotti (Lega). The final objective is to start the parliamentary process to definitively abolish the alternation between solar time and summer time. If at the end of the process the proposal is approved, a regulatory proposal will be arrived at by 30 June 2026.
The initiative is based on the public consultation carried out by European Commission in 2018in which approximately 4.6 million European citizens participated, the84% of whom he expressed himself in favor of eliminating the time change.
In the 2019Indeed, the European Parliament had approved a proposal for a directive to leave individual states the freedom to choose between permanent summer or solar time. The work, however, had stalled due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the difficulty in establishing a common time calendar across the European Union.
Reasons and possible benefits of permanent daylight saving time
But why is the proposal that of abolish solar timemaking daylight saving time permanent? In fact, solar time is considered “natural” because it follows the apparent motion of the Sun, placing midday (i.e. 12) around the moment in which the Sun reaches its highest point in the sky.
The main reason would have to do with the energy saving, environmental and economic resulting from moving the hands of the clocks forward by one hour: according to Terna data (the company that manages the national transmission network), between March and October 2025 the Italian electricity system consumed 310 million kWh less, equal to the average needs of approximately 120,000 families over the course of a year. In practice, this data translates into economic savings of more than that 90 million euros. At the same time, this lower electricity consumption made it possible to avoid CO emissions2 into the atmosphere for approximately 145,000 tons.
Again according to Terna, between 2004 and 2025 Italy saved a total of over 12 billion kWh thanks to summer time, which resulted, in economic terms, in savings for citizens of approximately 2.3 billion euros.
In Italy, summer time was introduced for the first time in 1916, with the aim of making the most of solar hours, reducing the waste of daylight and saving energy during the First World War, which was underway at the time.
In the following years, however, its adoption was not constant, alternating years in which it was suppressed and others in which it was reinstated: after approximately 20 years of uncertainty, in 1966 Law no. 1144 decreed the official entry into force of summer time in our country, with “normal time brought forward, for all intents and purposes, by sixty minutes”.
Because the European proposal to abolish the time change has stalled
As anticipated, the proposal is based on the public consultation launched by European Commission in 2018in which 4.6 million European citizens participated: 84% of these expressed their support for the abolition of the time change. Following these results, in 2019 the European Parliament approved a proposal for a directive, which would have allowed individual Member States the freedom to choose whether to make summer or winter time permanent.
Despite the attempts, however, the European process ran aground almost immediately. The reasons for this stop are various: first of all the Covid-19 pandemic, which effectively slowed down the entire process, given that the final decision – never made official – should have arrived by 2021.
The main problem, however, is that of outlining a common time calendar across the European Union: effectively, the initial proposal allowed member states to freely choose between summer time and standard time, also on the basis of national needs. Precisely this, however, has made it more difficult to understand how to set up a “fixed time” system at community level.
In short, the work has been extended, the biggest difficulties concern the choice of the time zone to be adopted permanently: it is no coincidence that if on the one hand summer time allows for energy and environmental savings, on the other solar time is considered the most “natural” one. Added to this is the fact that several scientific studies have highlighted the negative impact of the time change on human health and, in particular, onalteration of the circadian rhythm of our body.
Specifically, changing the time twice a year would disrupt the natural sleep-wake cycle, making us feel tired, distracted and sleepy – especially during the first day of the time change – with the possibility of negatively influencing the number of heart attacks.
