Time in Europe


spans seven primary time zones, excluding summer time offsets. Most European countries use summer time and harmonise their summer time adjustments; see Summer time in Europe for details.
The time zones actually in use in Europe differ significantly from uniform zoning based purely on longitude, as used for example under the nautical time system. The world could in theory be divided into 24 time zones, each of 15 degrees of longitude. However, due to geographical and cultural factors it is not practical to divide the world so evenly, and actual time zones may differ significantly from those based purely on longitude. In Europe, the widespread use of Central European Time causes major variations in some areas from solar time. Based on solar time, CET would range from 7.5 to 22.5°E. However, for example Spain and France should theoretically use UTC, as they did before the Second World War. The general result is a solar noon which is much later than clock noon, and later sunrises and sunsets than should theoretically happen. The Benelux countries should also theoretically use GMT.
Russia and Belarus observed "permanent summer time" between March 2011 and October 2014. Since October 2014 Russia has observed "permanent winter time". Iceland can be considered to be on "de facto" permanent summer time because, since 1968, it uses UTC time all year, despite being located more than 15° west of the prime meridian. It should therefore be located in, but chooses to remain closer to continental European time, resulting in legal times significantly in advance of local solar time; this is of little practical significance owing to the wide variations in daylight hours in that country.
The European Commission did in September 2018 propose ending the observance of summer time in the EU. In March 2019, the European Parliament voted in favour of ending seasonal clock changes in 2021 as proposed year. Legislation of the EU is decided by both the parliament and the council of the European Union, and the council decision lacked as of September 2019. Each Member State will have to decide until April 2020 whether to remain permanently on their previous "summer time" or their "winter time".

Use

Of the 28 EU member states :
Of non-EU member states:
The overseas territories of Denmark, France, Netherlands and the United Kingdom are mostly located outside Europe and use other time zones.

List of time zones