Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)
2. Session /Séance. Regional (trans-border) Cooperation / Coopération régionale (transfrontaliere) - Brejon de Lavergnée, Marie-Edith: New economic Zones and their Archives / Nouvelles zones économiques et leurs archives (english 77 - français 100)
2. Session/Seance: Brejon de Lavergnée, New economic Zones and their Archives these moves towards the safeguarding of European archives, whilst for the moment the groupings of regions do not enjoy a legal structure and work with bodies which are more unconnected than joint whose levels of competence are different. But what is to become of archives without structure? Even if an administrative body for associations of regions should be established, what will be decided about archives? Is it possible to envisage them being brought together at the headquarters of the Assembly of European Regions (AER), whose ambition it is to become a European Parliament for regions; but the archives will then be at a distance from their users. With the practice of rotating chairmanships, if they are kept in each region within a euroregion, they will be scattered about. It will then be necessary, following the example of ministers, to reach the point of persuading successive chairmen of a euroregion to transfer their archives to the body created for the purpose of preserving them; at present this is very simple within the same country, where new provisions will have to be added to existing legislation, what will it be like, when several states are involved? How can a sufficiently neutral location and body be found, which would win the approval of public and private organisations and of businesses and in which they would agree to their archives being brought together. There was a scheme of this kind in the Economic Development Zone with the establishment of a university institute for the bringing together and study of archives. But the question has already arisen of what happens when the persons in charge change their job and their successor had other interests. In the present state of affairs, it is without doubt wiser to use official archive services in the countries involved, which would be made responsible in accordance with the principle of territoriality for European archives found within their territory. Even if archives were to be transferred, the problem of accessibility would arise with regard to the languages used. In addition to the various laws relating to access to administrative records and to state archives there are other difficulties connected with the present organisation of regional associations and the practice of rotating secretariats. Usually, the archives which they produce and preserve belong to one of the three following levels: records which are entirely public (official texts, reports, etc.), the kind of internal documentation to be found in all secretariats, internal administrative records (accounts of meetings, duplicate copies of letters, invitations etc.) which are not secret and can be handed on to each succeeding secretariat, records private to the office itself (files of draft docuemts and letters of a more or less confidential nature), which it is not wished to pass on to a successor. Not withstanding the fact that transfers of records between institutions within the same region are difficult, they are more often made for friendship’s sake than for purposes of business; reluctance to transmit records lies more with administrators than politicians. In these circumstances what becomes of the concept of the transferring service? 91
