European Summer Time

European Summer Time is the arrangement in Europe by which clocks are advanced by one hour in Spring to make the most of seasonal daylight. This is done in all of the countries of Europe except Iceland which observes Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) all year round, and Russia, which has two time zones in Europe: Kaliningrad Oblast, which observes Kaliningrad Time, (UTC+03:00), and the rest of European Russia, which observes Moscow Time, (UTC+04:00). In the European Union, this period extends from 01:00 GMT on the last Sunday in March until 01:00 GMT on the last Sunday in October each year. Europe is currently observing Summer Time.This is automatically computed by the Mediawiki software by checking whether today's date falls within the interval specified by the above formulae.

History

Historically the countries of Europe had different practices for observing summer time, but this hindered coordination of transport, communications and movements. However by the 1980s with international flights becoming common the European Community began issuing directives requiring member states to legislate particular start and end dates for summer-time.

Since 1981 each directive has specified a transition time of 01:00 UTC and a start date of the last Sunday in March, but the end dates have differed. In 1981 and 1982 the end dates were the fourth Sunday in October. In 1983 the end date was changed to the last Sunday in September for all time zones other than Western......
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