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Residents in Cyprus will lose an hour of sleep after Daylight Saving Time goes into effect Sunday morning, with European officials and public opinion still divided on whether there is value in switching back and forth at all.
According to the DST annual tradition currently in effect in EU countries including Cyprus, clocks have to be moved forward one hour on Sunday, March 26.
The change officially takes place on Sunday early morning at 3am, with clocks moving one hour forward to show 4am. Many people typically set their clocks to the new time before going to bed on Saturday night.
Greece and EU countries will spring forward this weekend along with Turkish Cypriots in the northern part of the island.
A previous attempt in the north to stick to summer time all year round, an arrangement that matched neighbor Turkey which does not participate in DST, was quickly abandoned after Turkish Cypriot unions blamed a deadly early morning school bus accident on not switching back to standard time.
Neighboring Lebanon announced on Friday that it would delay the time change, pushing DST back for a month in the politically divided country. Media pundits pointed out this which would allow fasting Muslims to break their fast an hour earlier during Ramadan.
A previous attempt in the north to stick to summer time all year round was quickly abandoned after Turkish Cypriot unions blamed a deadly school bus accident on not switching back to standard time
Clocks will fall back to standard time later this year when daylight saving period will end on the last Sunday in October.
Time change was supposed to be over after the European Commission in 2018 called on the European Parliament to pass a law requiring member states to stick to either winter’s standard time or make daylight savings for summer permanent all year long.
But ministers in Brussels failed time and again to approve the measure, mainly due to different opinions amongst member states, meaning that this year’s daylight saving won’t be the last for the EU.
Modern DST was first implemented in the United States in 1918 as a wartime effort to save an hour's worth of fuel each day to light lamps and coal to heat homes. It went through some chaotic arrangements on and off until 1966 when the Uniform Time Act made DST consistent nationwide.
Cypriot politicians and business leaders have argued that DST is necessary for the island, as it gets dark very early in the winter while there is more daylight in the summer for business and leisure activities.
But many countries or specific districts within countries around the world already do not participate in DST, echoing the counterargument that changing time twice a year is unhelpful or unnecessary in this day and age.
