Time in Portugal

Daylight saving time (locally known as Hora de Verão, meaning "summer time") is observed nationwide from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October, when continental Portugal and Madeira advance one hour to UTC+01:00, and the Azores advances one hour to UTC+00:00.

[2] In 1861, the Astronomical Observatory of Lisbon was founded and, in 1878, it was tasked with the exclusive competence of calculate its mean solar time and to transmit it to rest of the country's public services.

[3] Portugal returned to GMT following the end of the war in 1945, and one hour of DST continued to be observed.

[6] From 1966, DST was observed year-round, so that, in practice, Portugal changed its time zone from WET (UTC+00:00) to CET (UTC+01:00).

[8] Furthermore, in the 1970s, the idea of reintroducing DST as an energy saving measure gained strength in Europe as well as in Portugal.

[9] However, although there were so many complaints in the country with the use of UTC+01:00 year round, it became clear to policymakers that if DST was to be re-introduced, it could never be observed as CEST (UTC+02:00), and the only solution was to re-adopt WET as standard time.

[11] However, the measure quickly proved to be a failure in achieving its objectives and became unpopular: on winter mornings, the sun was still rising at 09:00 and people travelled to work in the dark.

[12][15][14] A company hired by The European Commission conducted a study which concluded that, in fact, there were no energy savings because, due to the dark early mornings, workers turned on lights in their offices and forgot to turn them off, leaving them switched on for the rest of the morning, which increased energy consumption.

In December 1995, the government (now led by António Guterres) commissioned a report to Lisbon Observatory on the issue of Portuguese standard time.