As mentioned in the Background, my proposal is to side step the de-facto block on the abolition of Summer Time by gently moving into time zone UTC field by field.
My choice of UTC is mainly because it doesn’t have Summer Time. It’s also close enough to the time zones in use today. Some fields already use it, like computers and airlines. We could expand the use into other fields.
Proper time keeping has many applications in modern society and it’s easy to overlook the complexity of this issue. In some cases, synchronisation of time is more important than the time-of-day uses.
Hybrid system
Rather than observing time zones and Summer Time on a national or EU level, we could observe them on a contract level. This will lower the stakes. The countries can make the offical move to whatever time zone they choose later.
An agreement between an employer and an employee which states work starts at 08:00 in the local time of Germany, could encode it as 07:00 UTC during Standard Time and 06:00 UTC during Summer Time (the current status quo) and whatever the German government decides to be the national time in the future would not affect this agreement. The concern of societal impact of abolitioning Summer Time, which is the thing blocking it, would be moot. The previously mentioned agreement could also pick a single start time making it a permanent Standard Time or a permanent Summer Time.
Notation
There are various ways to to tell the reader that we mean UTC rather than the local time. I propose we put a U in front of the hour numbers when you mean UTC, T in front of the hours when it’s not obvious you mean local time and nothing in front of the hours defaults to local time but should have some other thing confirming the context.
