On Mon, 31 Aug 2026 at 20:10, Cult Consult via tz <[email protected]> wrote:
> I would like to report a likely error in Europe/Sofia's 1996 data, found > while > verifying tzdb's Bulgarian history against primary legal sources, and to > flag a > related open question for 1983-1990. > Thanks for writing in. * The DST regime in force through 1996 was established by Council of > Ministers > Decree No. 6 of 26 January 1979 (State Gazette / Държавен вестник No. > 12/1979), which provides for summer time "until 30 September" each year. > * A last-Sunday-of-October end appears in Bulgarian law for the first time > in > Decree No. 94 of 13 March 1997 (State Gazette No. 24/1997). Its Article 2 > also fixes the autumn change at 04:00 local time. The full text is in the > government's legal-information system PRIS (pris.government.bg). The > decree's repeal clause enumerates the entire prior regime: Decree 6/1979 > and > item 12 of Directive (Разпореждане) No. 15 of 11 March 1980, the latter > marked as never published. Back in February 2026, our list had received a report about more recent timestamps in Moldova that simultaneously called into question a similar transition to EU-like rules in the mid-1990s: https://lists.iana.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/thread/BJKJFGKLLQYCPZGPB6BG562C5E5BRLCR/#BJKJFGKLLQYCPZGPB6BG562C5E5BRLCR In attempting to follow up on that, I had ended up digging a bit into neighboring areas of southeastern Europe and the Balkans, including Bulgaria, but had reached similar dead-ends for Bulgaria as I had also identified the 1980 order as unpublished. (In the broadest strokes, these regions all gradually shifted from Soviet/Russia-like DST rules to EU-like rules between about 1979 and 1997, but details are murky at best because each was also changing its own practices throughout the period as well.) Since law and practice can differ, before proposing a patch we have > initiated: > > - a request to the Bulgarian National Library for scans of five national > dailies for 27-30 September and 25-28 October 1996 (the clock-change > notices > published to the public); > - freedom-of-information requests to the Council of Ministers and the State > Archives Agency for the unpublished Directive 15/1980 and all clock-time > acts 1979-1997; > - inquiries with the Bulgarian Institute of Metrology and the BTA > news-agency > archive. > > We will report what the archives show, in either direction. > All of that legwork is much appreciated. As this is far-historical data, there is of course no rush on our end, and we can validate and evaluate whatever you're able to get back whenever that may happen. Since, where our transitions are wrong, they are probably off by a few hours or weeks in a handful of random years, it is probably best to tackle this holistically all at once rather than piecemeal, if we can. If you have interest in formulating similar archival requests for Romanian or Moldovan data which could be helpful, we'd certainly appreciate it as well. Thanks. -- Tim Parenti
