The EU Commission wanted to abolish the time change years ago – but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s different in Greenland: On the island, which as an autonomous region of Denmark does not belong to the EU, the clocks remain in summertime.

While most European countries changed their clocks on Sunday night, Greenland ignored this for the first time and has stuck to summertime. The government announced in advance that Greenland would be moving into a new time zone. The Greenlanders want to move one hour closer to Denmark and the rest of Europe; since Sunday the time difference between Germany and Greenland marks only be three hours instead of four.

The largest island in the world is officially part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but is largely autonomous and does not belong to the European Union.

According to the Danish news agency Ritzau, the Greenlandic government agreed in November 2022 to abolish the time change on the island. In the future, the UTC-2 time zone will apply all year round. According to government information, clocks should only be turned back on weekends in the small East Greenland town of Ittoqqortoormiit, which will not adjust to the new time zone until March 2024.

There has been discussion in the EU for a long time about abolishing the time change. The EU Commission already planned to abolish the change in 2018. However, no binding decisions have been made so far. The European governments could not agree on whether they wanted to permanently maintain summer or standard time.