Summer / Winter time period

European nations have been taking advantage of the time change for decades, since 1996 the European Union (EU) standardized the EU-wide summer time period. The EU version of Daylight Saving Time goes from the last Sunday in March through the last Sunday in October. In the southern hemisphere where summer comes in December, Daylight Saving Time is observed from October to March. Equatorial and tropical countries on lower latitudes, don't observe Daylight Saving Time since the daylight hours are similar during every season, so there's no advantage to moving clocks forward during the summer. If you live in Europe, don’t forget to change your clock, turn time back to GMT+1 this weekend. In the night of Saturday to Sunday, at 2am turn your watch back one hour to 1am. The good news is that you have one more hour of sleep or partying on Saturday night and the bad news is that we will have many more hours of darkness in the next couple of months.
Be cool, because we’ll be back to summer time on March 30, 2008

source & image:
en.wikipedia.org