Europe to Hold Two-Year Public Rehearsal of Permanent Summer Time, With Every Citizen Required to Reset Their Own Clock by Hand at the Border
Brussels has ordered a continent-wide two-year rehearsal of permanent summer time, in which every European must physically carry their clocks to the nearest border and reset them by hand, while Spain's government has declared a national festival around the twice-yearly ritual.
BRUSSELS — The European Union has ordered a two-year continent-wide rehearsal of permanent summer time, beginning with the October change, in which every citizen must physically carry all household clocks to the nearest national border and reset them by hand under the supervision of a customs officer.
The rehearsal, approved after the Polish presidency's proposal for a two-year trial, requires each member state to build a chain of clock-resetting stations along its frontiers. At each station, a citizen presents a clock, a wristwatch and any kitchen timer, and an official confirms the new permanent hour before stamping the device with a small brass seal. «We are not changing the time,» said a European Commission spokesperson. «We are changing where the time is kept. It is a logistical matter, and we have the logistics.»
In Spain, the government has declared the weekend of the change a national festival, with town halls erecting giant clock faces in plazas and mayors leading crowds in counting down from three to two. The Ministry for the Ecological Transition has published a timetable in which every citizen is assigned a fifteen-minute slot at the nearest border station, and the railway operator has added special trains to the Portuguese and French frontiers, each carriage fitted with hooks for hanging grandfather clocks.
Not everyone is celebrating. The Spanish Sleep Society has asked to be exempted from the rehearsal, arguing that the body's internal clock cannot be carried to a border and stamped. The Commission has replied that sleep will be coordinated at a later stage, and that in the meantime citizens are advised to rehearse at home by walking their alarm clocks around the living room.
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