🕚🌞😫
So, a while ago the European Commission decided it wanted to end the summer and wintertime("Daylight saving time"), which screws with people a lot, they probably figured out.
This means we no longer have to switch timezones twice a year, yay! But it does mean that the Netherlands has to choose what timezone they want. Now, some people in the Netherlands wanted summertime permanently instead. Ah yes, the sultry summertime: with long romantic evenings, late dinners with friends, reminding of nice feelings. Yes.
BIG NO. Absolutely not, thank you. Do these people even realise how shitty summertime is? You see, during summertime(UTC+02:00), when it is 12 'o clock according to the sun - the highest point of the sun - it's roughly 13:45 here. This means we are living 1 hour and 45 minutes forward. When you get up at 9:00, it is according to the sun 7:15. That's quite a discrepancy. And when you think it's late and it should get dark, it's not getting dark, because the sun is trailing quite behind. When it's 18:00 in the summer it doesn't feel at all as evening. And it makes the sun go down really late. Which is a pain when you want to sleep, especially when hot outside, because it will also cool down later. A cool temperature is an important factor for a good sleep.
Is this why they have dinner so late in spanish culture? In Spain, they are living even more westward, yet they use the same summertime(UTC+02:00), so the discrepancy is even more big. According to solar time, they should be in UTC+00:00. Most of Spain is living more than two hours forward. Oof.
And what effect does summertime have in the winter? Same, but different. It becomes light VERY Late. You have to get up during dark, which nobody likes.
Wintertime is UTC+01:00, still 45 minutes later than solar time. You could even argue the Netherlands should be in UTC+00:00. This is why, in my opinion the Netherlands, in any case, should ABSOLUTELY NOT have the summertime of UTC+02:00 permanently. That would be tornment to our biologic rithm: following a time that would be correct in Kyiv, Ukraine, far east of Amsterdam.
Apparently a large portion of dutch people thought a permanent summertime would be a better idea. This, if anything, describes a weak point in democracy: do people really know what they want?
The Netherlands doesn't have a great difference in solar time between most east and most west, a quick and dirty calculation shows less than 14 minutes. China however, uses one timezone(UTC+08:00), yet the most east point seems to have a solar time in UTC+09:00 and the most west point UTC+05:00: a difference of four hours, in the same timezone. Yikes. I'm sure you can find more examples like these.
Also I am not a sleep scientist or whatever, so probably listen to them instead. But I wanted to explain my personal perspective.