Further-eastern European Time

Time zones of Europe:

blue	Western European Time (UTC+0) Western European Summer Time (UTC+01:00)
light blue	Western European Time (UTC+0)
red	Central European Time (UTC+01:00) Central European Summer Time (UTC+02:00)
yellow	Eastern European Time (UTC+02:00) Eastern European Summer Time (UTC+03:00)
orange	Further-eastern European Time (UTC+03:00)
light green	Moscow Time (UTC+04:00)

Light colours indicate countries that do not observe summer time: Algeria, Belarus, Iceland, Russia, Tunisia.

Further-eastern European Time (FET) (Kaliningrad Time in Kaliningrad Oblast in Russia, Minsk Time in Belarus) is since September 2011 defined as three hours ahead of UTC (UTC+03:00). It was established as the official time for the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast and then followed by Belarus.

History

Until 2011, Further-eastern European Time was identical to Eastern European Time (UTC+2; UTC+3 with daylight saving time). However, on 27 March 2011, Russia moved to the so called "year-round daylight saving time"^[1], so that clocks would remain on what had been the summer time all year round, making Kaliningrad Time permanently set to UTC+3, peculiarly placing its time ahead of countries to its east during winter. Belarus followed Russia on September 15, 2011^[2], and the same decisions was made by the Ukrainian parliament on September 20, 2011^[3]. After strong criticism from the mass media, on 18 October 2011 the Ukrainian parliament cancelled its previous decision^[4]. Transnistria, a breakaway territory from Moldova on the Dniester river bordering Ukraine, followed Ukraine by at first adopting Further-eastern European Time^[5] but later cancelling this decision^[6].

The name "Further-eastern European Time" seems to have come from work on tzdata, the Unix time zone database.^[7][8]

See also

• Time zone
• UTC+03:00

References

1. ^ Russia Time Change
2. ^ Eternal Daylight Saving Time (DST) in Belarus
3. ^ Ukraine cancels use of daylight saving time, Kyiv Post (September 20, 2011)
4. ^ "Ukraine to return to standard time on Oct. 30 (updated)". Kyiv Post. 18 October 2011. http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/115146/. Retrieved 18 October 2011. 
5. ^ Transnistria stays on Daylight Saving Time
6. ^ Transnistria's clocks move back October 30, 2011
7. ^ Edwin Groothuis, at freebsd.org (27 Sep 2011). "cvs commit: ports/misc/zoneinfo Makefile distinfo". http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg202018.html. Retrieved 16 Oct 2011. 
8. ^ Alexander Bokovoy, employed at Red Hat Software (Sep 21, 2011). "Дальневосточное Европейское время" (in Russian). https://plus.google.com/u/0/117200318980623167325/posts/TgF6UsrATGx. Retrieved 16 Oct 2011.