Morocco returns to Greenwich Mean Time

“Sky News” – Morocco is preparing to return to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), after nearly eight years of observing daylight saving time (GMT+1), in a move that ends an experiment that sparked widespread debate over its social, health, and economic repercussions.

According to Decree No. 2.26.530, which has been approved by the Moroccan government, the clock will be set back by 60 minutes at 2:00 a.m. on September 20, thereby repealing Decree No. 2.18.855 issued in October 2018, which had added an hour to the Kingdom’s legal time, as reported by the Moroccan website Hespress.

This marks the end of Morocco’s permanent adoption of daylight saving time, which began in autumn 2018, and its temporary return to GMT during the month of Ramadan.

The Moroccan government had decided on October 26, 2018, to permanently fix the time at GMT+1, justifying the decision at the time by the desire to avoid changing the clock more than once a year and to minimize the associated repercussions.

In March 2019, the Constitutional Court confirmed that setting the legal time falls within the government’s regulatory authority, not within the legislative domain of Parliament.

The debate resurfaced strongly in 2026, after the Minister of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, Leila Benali, stated before the House of Representatives in April that “adopting daylight saving time during the winter does not yield the same energy-saving and consumption-reduction benefits observed during the summer.”

The minister pointed out the “absence of any actual and tangible reduction in electricity demand,” emphasizing the need to update previous studies on the impact of daylight saving time in light of changing consumer behavior.