Many countries and territories have abolished annual time changes after observing them for many years: Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Cook Islands, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Georgia, Hong Kong, Iceland, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Mongolia, Namibia, Paraguay, Russia, Samoa, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, Uruguay, Vanuatu, and most of Mexico. To select the time to be used all year, some of them adopted the time previously used outside their DST period, but others adopted the time previously used during their DST period, an effect known as "permanent DST".
European Union On 8 February 2018, the
European Parliament voted to ask the
European Commission to re-evaluate DST in the European Union. An online survey was performed between 4 July and 16 August 2018, in which 4.6 million
EU citizens Out of all the participants, about 84% did not desire to adjust clocks twice annually. Based on this poll, on 12 September 2018 the
European Commission decided to propose an end to seasonal clock changes (repealing Directive 2000/84/EC). In order for this proposal to be valid, the
European Union legislative procedure must be followed, mainly that the
Council of the European Union and the European Parliament must both approve it. The seasonal changes were supposed to stop in 2021, but the
Council of the European Union asked the
European Commission for a detailed impact assessment before countries would decide on how to proceed. States may freely choose whether to observe DST or not, but if they observe it they must follow the national schedule, and changing their standard time also requires approval from the federal government. The proposed
Sunshine Protection Act would change federal law to abolish annual time changes and permanently advance by one hour the standard time in all areas of the United States that previously observed DST, effectively adopting permanent DST. The proposal has been introduced in every term of the
United States Congress since 2018. In 2022, it passed the
Senate with
unanimous consent but expired without consideration by the
House of Representatives. == See also ==