American Enlightenment Scheduled for 2007

I was chatting with Mel on Skype¹ just now and he pointed me towards this item that had passed me by: apparently, as part of this month's huge US energy bill (that's a law by the way, not a final demand from Exxon or the Saudis or something. That bill has already arrived), the US has decided to extend daylight savings time by one month each side of the Winter. The rationale (for evaluations see here and here) is that this would save enormously on energy use, although there would be transitional costs. Also, the Canadians are somewhat pissed at the decision.

Still, it does present interesting questions for us Europeans, who would end up four/five and six/seven hours ahead of the US East Coast for a month each year, with attendant implications for transatlantic business transactions. I'm guessing that some groups, for example in financial services, will start pushing for the change across Europe too. I wonder what the national sovereignty crowd will say to that: might this be a case of the Imperium tail wagging the old European dog?

¹ Being dead hip, we tried Google's new chat thingy, but Skype is just better!