In the 19th century, a single time zone across Finland was needed to coordinate scheduling for the newly invented railway and telegraph.

In 2017, the Finnish parliament voted in favour of proposals calling on the European Union to consider abolishing daylight saving time.

Finland's high latitude means that in summer the nights are short, and daylight saving time has no impact on the population.

[1] The railway required more precise timetables than earlier means of transport, such as sailing ships and stage-coaches.

The telegraph, which allowed near real-time communication, also made it inconvenient for each location to observe its own solar time.

[2][5] A ball was released at noon and its falling was noted optically at the railway station and the clock adjusted accordingly.

[18] Nevertheless, as the range of telecommunications increased, Helsinki time spread to common usage throughout the country as it made communications more convenient.

[22] Between the late 1920s and mid-1930s, development of railway and telegraph connections increased communication between Finland and its western neighbours.

[23] The proposal failed to gain support, as the Ostrobothnia Chamber of Commerce released a statement in September arguing that Finnish companies were adequately adapting to the two time zones.

[22][24] The possible time zone change was discussed at the European Timetable Conference in Stockholm in October 1937, where the representatives of Finland, alongside Estonia and Latvia, agreed to present the proposal for the transition to Central European Time to their respective governments.

[28] Daylight saving time was first attempted on 2 April 1942, after the Finnish Medical Society Duodecim claimed that observing daylight saving time would provide economic benefits (the later light in the evenings means less energy consumption) and limit food consumption.

[29] The clock moved forward one hour at 24:00 and back again on 4 October at 01:00, but the government did not find daylight saving time useful and its observation was abandoned.

[30] In 1980, the other Nordic countries introduced daylight saving time, in line with the directive from the European Economic Community, as did the Soviet Union in 1981.

The current government regulation stipulating that the European Union directive be followed came into effect in 2001.

[32] Finland's high latitude means that in summer the nights are short (in Helsinki in July, there are only five hours between sunset and sunrise), and daylight saving time has no impact on the population.

[36][37] In 2017, the Finnish parliament voted in favour of proposals calling on the European Union to consider abolishing daylight saving time, and a citizen's petition that same year asking the state to give up the practice received 70,000 signatures.

[39] On 4 March 2019, the European Parliament Transport and Tourism Committee approved the commission's proposal, with a start date planned to be postponed until 2021 at the earliest in order to ensure a smooth transition.

Yle, Finland's national broadcasting company, has stated that the government would first gather expert opinions and consult the public before implementing changes.

[48] Because of Finland's high latitude, in summer there is no local utility to daylight saving time.

[51] The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the Centre for Metrology and Accreditation are responsible for implementing leap seconds to Finland's time zone, following the International Bureau of Weights and Measures as defined by the International Telecommunication Union.

As an example, VTT noted that a network connection at a speed of 100 Mbit/s results in a 0.0001 second delay between the official time of Finland and that of what is displayed on a computer.