Plans to scrap a bi-annual time change across the EU are on the “back-back-burner” as the EU focuses on the twin crises of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and growing inflation.

This means clocks will continue to move forward by one hour in March and back again in October for the foreseeable future.

“Plans aren’t just on the back burner; they are on the back back burner,” Labour MEP Alex Agius Saliba said. 

Following a European Commission proposal, the European Parliament voted in favour of ending the constant switch between summertime and wintertime in 2021.

Approval from the Council of Ministers was the next step, but this never happened.

With the EU’s focus on Ukraine and inflation, plans to scrap daylight savings time have been put on hold indefinitely. 

The commission and member states have also been unable to agree on the finer details of the proposal, sources said.

Agius Saliba said the internal market committee in the European Parliament was told as much in informal meetings between the parliamentary committee, council and commission. 

Several countries, most recently Sweden, have all held the Council’s rotating presidency since the European Parliament’s vote. They could have put the end of daylight savings time on the agenda, but none have done so.

Several studies have shown that bi-yearly time shift has adverse effects on health. Heart attacks, immune-related diseases and digestive issues tend to increase in the week following the shift forward in time.

A small increase in traffic accidents is usually also recorded. 

In Malta, a 2018 survey found that most Maltese favour keeping summer time throughout the year.

At the time, then European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said that more than 80 per cent of EU citizens wanted to abolish the EU's switch and favoured keeping the time used in summer for the whole year.

Under the draft regulation, each EU member state would have had the freedom to decide its standard time, and stick to it throughout the year.

Agius Saliba said that should there be renewed interest in implementing permanent time zones, the process would likely need to restart from scratch. “Impact assessments and other documents are already too old,” he said.