On the weekend between Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th October, the hands will go back one hour for the traditional changeover from summer time to standard time. A ritual that has accompanied the European autumn for decades, but which for many – and in particular for Pedro Sánchez’s Spain – has now lost all meaning.
The Spanish Prime Minister has in fact decided to combat this practice by all means, declaring that “changing time twice a year no longer has any reason to exist” and that his government aims to put an end to it by 2026. During a video published on social media, Sánchez announced that Spain has officially presented the issue to the Energy Council of the European Union, asking to start the “review mechanism” promised years ago.
The prime minister appeals both to science, which would demonstrate the energy irrelevance of the time change, and to public opinion, which is increasingly against it. Indeed, a 2018 European poll, in which 4.6 million citizens participated, showed that 84% were in favor of abolishing the double six-monthly exchange rate.
Changing the time twice a year doesn’t make sense.
It helps to boost energy and has a negative impact on people’s health and life.
Therefore, today the Government of Spain will propose to the EU to take action with the change of summer time in the Energy Council and… pic.twitter.com/LA9UM0HVfG
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) October 20, 2025
The forgotten vote of the European Parliament
The topic is not new. In 2019, the European Parliament had already voted to eliminate the obligation to change the time, leaving individual states with the choice of maintaining summer or winter time. However, the lack of a common position among member countries has frozen the process. The Union never decided how to harmonize time zones and the debate has remained suspended until today. With the current European calendar valid until 2026, Spain now intends to reopen the dossier and push for a final decision.
According to Sánchez, the time change not only does not generate significant energy savings, but causes disturbances to biological rhythms and affects the psychophysical well-being of citizens. “Science tells us that changing the time does not lead to energy savings and disrupts biological rhythms twice a year” explains the Spanish prime minister in the video.
The data seems to prove him right: according to an analysis by Terna, in 2024 the estimated savings were around 340 million kWh, a negligible figure compared to the 312 billion kWh of overall consumption. The Spanish government thus aims to present itself as the promoter of a useful policy based on scientific evidence, capable of responding to the concrete needs of the population and of coordinating with neighboring countries, France and Portugal, to avoid imbalances in the Iberian time zone.
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