Quote:
Originally Posted by FlorenceArt
Yes, but why is France not in the Greenwich time zone?
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Since legal, political, and economic in addition to purely physical or geographical, criteria are used in the drawing of time zones, it follows that actual time zones do not precisely adhere to meridian lines. The 'GMT' time zone, were it drawn by purely geographical terms, would consist of exactly the area between meridians 7°30'W and 7°30'E.
As a result, there are European locales that despite lying in an area with a 'physical' UTC time, actually use another time zone (UTC+1 in particular); contrariwise, there are European areas that use UTC, even though their 'physical' time zone is UTC-1 (e.g., most of Portugal), or even UTC−2 (the westernmost part of Iceland).