Cyprus springs forward again

People 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 in Cyprus, which is also currently an official EU requirement, clocks have to be moved forward one hour on Sunday, March 28, and fall back to standard time when the savings period ends at the end of October.

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.

This year’s time change was supposed to be the last after the European Parliament proposed that member states stick to either winter’s standard time or make daylight savings for summer permanent all year long.

But ministers in Brussels failed 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.

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.