The October 2026 clock change brings back the same question: could this finally be one of the last ones in France? With claims of an “upcoming” abolition resurfacing every year, it is easy to think the decision is almost settled. In reality, nothing supports the claim that the system is about to disappear.

To understand what value the clock change still has, three issues that are often mixed together need to be separated: the energy savings actually measured, the observed effects on health and accidents, and the European political process. Above all, comparing the orders of magnitude changes how the debate looks.

Energy savings still exist, but their weight has become very small in France

The French system dates back to 1976, after the first oil crisis. Its original aim was simple: better align active hours with daylight in order to reduce the electricity used for lighting. At the time, lighting accounted for a much larger share of household consumption than it does today.

The most telling figure is the one attributed to ADEME: the saving linked to the clock change would represent around 0.07% of the electricity consumed over a year. Another ADEME estimate, dating from 2010, put the figure at 440 GWh of electricity saved per year nationwide.

From a household perspective, the gain becomes almost invisible. According to the cited estimates, it is around 1 euro per year per household. Another calculation for 2026, based on electricity costing 0.22 euro per kilowatt-hour, comes to 2.60 euros per household per year. These values do not necessarily rely on the same method or the same reference year, so they should be read as orders of magnitude rather than as two directly comparable figures.

The reason for this declining energy value is fairly intuitive. Lighting accounted for about 12% of household electricity consumption in 1976, compared with less than 5% in 2026 according to the cited estimates. Shifting one hour of natural light therefore mattered more in the 1970s than it does today.

Why do some studies still find greater savings?

A 2017 study by the European Parliamentary Research Service, the EPRS, concluded that clock changes did have an effect on energy consumption, with results varying by latitude. It estimated savings ranging from 0.5% to 2.5% of total consumption depending on the country.

The gap with the 0.07% attributed to ADEME is huge. That does not necessarily mean one estimate is “true” and the other “false”: countries, uses, latitudes and methods are not the same. That is precisely one of the limits of the public debate on this issue: presenting a single percentage as a universal truth gives a far too simple picture of an effect that depends heavily on context.

My reading is therefore fairly clear: in France, the historical energy argument still exists, but it is no longer enough on its own to justify the system. Once it is compared with the other measured effects, a few euros or a few fractions of a percentage point per year seem far less decisive than they did in 1976.

Sleep, adaptation and accidents: the cost is not only about electricity

Moving from one time to another is not simply a matter of shifting the hands on a clock. Chronobiologists estimate that the body generally takes 3 to 7 days to adjust, with children and older people being particularly sensitive.

This delay does not prove that the clock change alone causes a serious health problem across the whole population. It does, however, show that biological adjustment is not instantaneous. That matters when comparing the now very small energy benefit with the temporary disruption to sleep and daily rhythms.

The most concrete figure concerns road traffic. France's road safety authority reports an 18% rise in accidents involving pedestrians between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the days after the clock change. Here again, a correlation measured over a specific period should not be turned into the sole explanation for all accidents. But the scale is large enough to matter in an overall assessment of the system.

A fatal road accident represents an average cost to society of 3.2 million euros, taking into account healthcare, compensation and lost productivity, among other factors. This figure cannot be used to directly calculate “the cost of the clock change”, but it shows why even a few additional accidents can quickly outweigh the annual savings made on electricity.

Another angle concerns work. A 2024 German study estimated a 0.3% drop in national productivity during the week following the clock change. An extrapolation for France estimated the lost value added at 180 million euros. This estimate should be treated cautiously because it is based on an extrapolation, but it gives an idea of what a small temporary drop in performance can represent on a large scale.

The consultancy Asterès had in fact concluded in 2019 that the clock change cost more overall than it saved. This kind of assessment inevitably depends on what is included in the calculation, but it highlights one essential point: judging the system solely from the electricity bill is no longer enough.

Abolition in Europe: the 2019 vote was never enough

This is probably where the main misunderstanding comes from. In March 2019, the European Parliament did vote to end seasonal clock changes, with implementation at the time planned from 2021. Each state was supposed to be able to choose between permanent summer time and permanent winter time.

But a European Parliament vote is not enough on its own to bring such a reform into force. The Council of the European Union never adopted a position that would allow the text to be finalised. The main issue is coordination between states: if each country chooses its time without an overall agreement, Europe could end up with an impractical patchwork of time zones and schedules for transport, trade and cross-border travel.

The issue then lost political priority, notably because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit and then the war in Ukraine. In October 2025, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez publicly revived the debate, without any abolition applying in France in 2026 being confirmed.

Public support for ending the system is nevertheless longstanding. The 2018 European consultation recorded 84% support for abolition. In France, a 2019 consultation found 83.71% of participants in favour, with 59.17% wanting to remain on summer time all year round. A 2025 poll still put the share of French people in favour of ending the clock change at nearly 70%.

These figures show a clear preference in the cited consultations, but they do not solve the central difficulty: stopping clock changes is one decision; then choosing a permanent time coordinated between countries is another.

So should France expect an imminent abolition?

No, nothing supports presenting abolition as imminent in 2026. The European Parliament opened the way in 2019, but no final decision has made the reform applicable. In France, no short-term change is confirmed by the available information.

The paradox is therefore quite clear. The historical energy-saving argument has weakened sharply, temporary effects on biological rhythms and certain accidents are documented, and a large majority of participants in the cited consultations want the system to end. Yet the decisive obstacle is no longer technical: it is political and lies in European coordination.

In other words, the real issue in October 2026 is not whether the idea of abolishing the clock change still exists. It has existed for years. The question is when the member states will manage to turn that intention into a common rule. Until that compromise is found, it is better to be cautious about headlines announcing “the last clock change” before an official decision has actually established it.