Egypt Standard Time

Egypt Standard Time is UTC+2, which is exactly the same as Eastern European Time, and is co-linear with neighboring Libya. Egypt has previously used Eastern European Summer Time (UTC+3), during the summer periods from 1957-2010 and 2014-15.

History

On 21 April 2011, the interim government abolished summer time. The standard time was used the whole year round, with no change in summer.

On 7 May 2014, the Egyptian interim government decided to use summer time starting from 15 May 2014, the third Friday of May, with an exception for the holy month of Ramadan. This just comes before the Egyptian presidential elections were expected to start.^[1]

On 20 April 2015, The Egyptian government decided not apply summer time this year following a poll that had been held in April 2015 regarding applying DST or not. The government decided to make the necessary amendment to the laws and asked the ministers to work on a study to determine the probability of applying daylight savings time in coming years or not.^[2] The ministry of electricity assured that the achieved electricity saving from applying summer time is not of any tangible effect.^[3]

On 29 April 2016, the government under Prime Minister Sherif Ismail decided to use summer time again (UTC+3) by July 7. It was to begin after Ramadan and last until the end of October. However, it was cancelled on July 4 following a vote by the Egyptian parliament on June 28 to abolish DST, and to comply with the April 2015 presidential decree to refrain from introducing DST.

Time zone changes

Period in use	Time offset from GMT	Name of Time
1800 – 1900	UTC+02:05	Eastern European Time
1901 – 1939	UTC+02:00	Eastern European Time
15 July 1940 – 1 November 1945	UTC+02:00 UTC+03:00	Eastern European Time Eastern European Summer Time
1946 – 1957	UTC+02:00	Eastern European Time
10 May 1957 – 20 April 2011	UTC+02:00 UTC+03:00	Eastern European Time Eastern European Summer Time
20 April 2011 – 15 May 2014	UTC+02:00	Eastern European Time
16 May 2014 – 20 April 2015	UTC+02:00 UTC+03:00	Eastern European Time Eastern European Summer Time
21 April 2015 – present	UTC+02:00	Eastern European Time

IANA time zone database

The IANA time zone database contains one zone for Egypt in the file zone.tab.

coordinates*	TZ*	Standard time	Summer time
+3003+03115	Africa/Cairo	UTC+02:00	not observed

References

1. "Egypt's government to re-apply daylight saving time".
2. "No daylight saving this summer: Egypt's prime minister".
3. "Council of Ministers Postpones Using Summer Time This Year". (Arabic)

See also

• Summer time in Egypt

External links

• Al-Ahram: Daylight savings time in Egypt postponed to July
• Al-Ahram: Egypt's government to re-apply daylight saving time
• Almasry Alyoum: Egypt to cancel daylight saving time
• Time and Date.com: Egypt Abolishes Daylight Saving Time
• Time and Date.com: Egypt re-introduces Daylight Saving Time