Easter Sunday only lasts 23 hours this year
Published: Sunday, Mar 31st 2024, 04:21
Volver a Live Feed
Summer time began on Easter Sunday night in Switzerland and in most European countries. The clocks were set forward to 03:00 at 02:00.
This meant that the Easter Bunny was particularly challenged this year: He had one hour less time to hide the eggs, as the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology (Metas) wrote last week in a press release on the time changeover. Officially, summer time is called "Central European Summer Time" (CEST). Until it ends on October 27, it will stay dark longer in the morning and light longer in the evening.
Many clocks change automatically. Since the decommissioning of the Swiss time signal transmitter in Prangins VD, Swiss radio-controlled clocks have received their signal from a radio tower near Frankfurt am Main in Germany.
Abolition repeatedly under discussion
Switzerland has been changing the clocks in summer since 1981. Summer time was introduced in this country to bring it into line with neighboring countries. It had previously been rejected in a referendum. Several European countries had already introduced summer time a few years earlier in order to save energy by making better use of daylight.
For several years now, there have been repeated discussions in the EU about abolishing the time change. The European Parliament voted in favor, but postponed the end of the time changeover planned for 2019 to 2021. However, the member states did not follow suit and put the plans on ice. The core problem of the EU discussion is a disagreement as to which time should prevail - standard time or summer time. The abolition of summer time has also been discussed in Switzerland.
©Keystone/SDA
Spanish 
English 
German 
French 
Arabic