4 ms·

Interestingly, that westward reach of CET is an artifact of WWII. France and the Benelux countries changed time zone in 1940 under German occupation, and Spain

• Ichthypresbyter 6y ago
  Before WW2, the Netherlands was on Amsterdam Time. This was originally 19 minutes and 32 seconds ahead of Greenwich, though they decided to round it to 20 minutes in 1937. The Netherlands was relatively late to adopt standard time at all. While the telegraph offices and railways switched to Amsterdam time in the mid 19th century, towns maintained their own local time zones until 1909, which often caused problems for travellers. I suspect that one reason for this is that Dutch church towers (and their clocks) are all the property of the local government, as a holdover from the Napoleonic occupation- so the people in charge of the clocks might have been reluctant to switch to Amsterdam time...