Vote Now! EU Petition to Cancel Summertime Ends Next Week

There’s just over a week left to sign the EU petition to cancel daylight savings time; launched in July the poll gives citizens of 28 member states the option of voting to keep or ditch the practice of turning back the clocks in the winter and setting them forward in the summer.

In Europe, “Summertime” datesto the First and Second World Warsas well as to the oil crisis in the 1970s when clock switchingwas mainly designed to save energy.

Individual health, road safety, increasing leisure opportunities stemming from longer daylight during evenings, or simply aligning national practices to neighbors and trading partners, have historically been cited as additional motivations for observing daylight savings.

A 2014 survey conducted by the European Commission found several vocal groups of citizens pushing to eliminate the practice—particulary in Finland, where more than 70,000 citizens signed a petition to abolish daylight savings time.

A faction of the Czech government has been angling to end the practice for a while now, declaring the time change to have “a significant negative impact on human health, accidents, transport, and livestock.”

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The survey is open to all European citizens until August 16th. (And it looks like people have strong feelings on the topic; the site’s servers went down just hours after the poll went live last month).

The European Commission’s poll won’t dictate EU policy, but it will help lawmakers decide if the time has come to put an end to daylight savings time.