Legal time 2025 from Sunday 30 March: how much you save and why it should last all year (also for health)
In the EU the proposal to keep the legal time all year round (for now) has been erected. Yet, it would do well to health and also to bills (but above all in the Mediterranean countries)
The legal time returns Between Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 March 2025when at two in the morning it will be necessary to move the hands forward of sixty minutes, or at three in the morning (as we know, nothing will be done, however, with smartphones, which adapt automatically). So, We will all sleep an hour lessbut on the other hand we will have longer days and more natural light to be exploited (the sunny time will return on Sunday 26 October 2025).
What is the legal time
The legal time is the agreement to move the hands of the watches of a state forward to better exploit the irradiation of the sun during the summer and save, therefore, in terms of electricity. The legal time was born precisely to encourage the energy saving In times of crisis and Italy adopted it for the first time during the First World War (in May 1916, with interruptions between 1921 and 1939 and, then, between 1948 and 1965). The dramatic reasons that pushed to that decision are now a distant memory, but also today, in times of necessary energy saving, the legal time performs its function very well.
Energy savings
However, the passage from calendar time to legal (and vice versa) is not painless. Indeed, it has negative health effects. As regards, however, bills the transition to legal hour has positive effects. Energy saving, in fact, is certain: in the last 20 years (from 2004 to 2024) it has been equal to 2.2 billion euros, for almost 12 billion of Kilowattora (KWh). According to the data of Terna, the company that manages the national transmission network, in 2024, « in the seven months of legal time the Italian electrical system benefited from lower energy consumption for 340 million kWh, equal to the value of average annual needs of about 130 thousand families». Savings in the bill was estimated at 75 million euros. The benefits of legal hour also impact the environment: last year there was a lower emission of C02 equal to 160 thousand tons.
Damage to the health of the changes of the hour
« The legal/hour passage passage and vice versa also determines negative repercussions on human health, » explained the president of the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine (SIMA), Alessandro Miani. «The circadian rhythmicity is altered, i.e. the biological clock of our body which, in the absence of signals from the external environment, completes its cycle in about 24 hours. Failure to comply with these natural rhythms has effects on blood pressure and heart rate: several studies have attested a correlation between change of timetables and cardiac pathologies, with the University of Stockholm which reported an incidence of the +4% of heart attacks in the week following the transition to the new timetable. There are also sleep problems in a substantial slice of the population, with negative consequences on concentration and mood and therefore on school performance, work efficiency, personal relationships, etc. Other studies then certified a correlation between the transition from legal time to calendar time and the increase in road accidents and at work, while research conducted in Australia has even found an increase in suicides in the first weeks of change of time « .
The EU proposal for the abolition of the time change
At a certain point, in recent years we had written that the stop at the change of the hour was imminent. Things, however, went differently. In 2018 the European Guide Commission Jean-Claude Juncker In fact, he had presented a proposal for the stop to change the hour, motivating it with the overwhelming results of a public consultation, which had had a record of 4.6 million responses and of which 84% in favor of the interruption of the half -yearly changes of the hour (To be honest, it must be said that the Italians practically deserted this public consultation via the web entered into mass). The Commission had also presented studies on damage to psycho-physical health caused by the change of timetables and underlined the poor relevance in terms of energy saving of the legal hour.
The proposal, however, was wrecked, because no final decision has been adopted in this regard. In fact, to adopt it, the green light of both the Council and the European Parliament is needed. The Eurocamra had voted in favor of the abolition of legal hour in 2021, while the advice that needs a qualified majority of Member States, has never succeeded. Why? Northern Europe countries tend to be against legal hourbecause subject to a variation of light between winter and more marked summer, while for the Mediterranean countries, such as Italy, the change of hour is advantageous for the hours of light. Currently, the abolition of the change of time in the EU is still among the « pending » proposals. Apparently, an informal consultation of the Member States is being planned to verify whether it is still feasible to carry on the topic.
