Sonderband 2. International Council on Archives. Dritte Europäische Archivkonferenz, Wien 11. bis 15. Mai 1993. Tagungsprotokolle (1996)

4. Session / Séance. Strategies for Links with Historical Research / Stratégies de Communication envers la Recherche historique - Palayret Jean-Marie: Towards a New History of Europe (integration period) / Pour une nouvelle Histoire européenne. La période de l’intégration) (english 393 - français 413)

Jean-Marie Palayret

Towards a new History of Europe (integration period)

Introduction

After over thirty years of existence, an enlargement to twelve Member States, a relaunching in 1986 with the Single Act and the prospect of a completed single market at the end of 1992, the European Communities are coming to take up a steadily growing place in university teaching and research programmes at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels1.

The history of integration is gaining ground every year, becoming an attractive research theme for an increasing number of professors and students inside and outside the Member States1 2. This interest indubitably marks the emergence of a new European „culture“ which is the fruit of the integration itself. If culture is understood as the outcome of a historical process acting as „the superstructure of any political, social and economic culture characterized by success and lastingness“3, it is undeniable that the construction of Europe, which for over forty years has given over 350 million Europeans shared developments and experience on the scale of twelve countries, has helped to give rise in them to common expectations and objectives.

It is nonetheless true that the growing accessibility of unpublished archival material has stimulated new research, leading to a reassessment of interpretations and of the whole question of the history of integration.

At a time when it is becoming clearer every day that it is opinion that will determine the speed-up or slow-down of the process of deepening and widening the Community, the responsibility of the archivist, whose role is to throw the light on history that is so important in the gaining of awareness, is committed. In any case, the disappearance of internal frontiers on 1 January 1993, accompanied by the train of measures harmonizing national laws and regulations, would be enough to prevent him from withdrawing into his ivory tower. Research has gone before: the EUREKA, EURAMUS and TEMPUS programmes are multiplying transnational student exchanges and the cross-border spread of university projects. Opening up the large market will encourage transfers and exchanges of archives on the whole Community territory. The political and economic integration of the twelve countries making up

1 Post-graduate Courses in European Integration, supplement to „New European Universities“, EC Commission 1990.

2 Report of „Europese eenwording in historisch perspectief. Factoren von integrarie en desintegratie“, ed. WAF Camphuis and CGJ Wildeboer Schut. Zaltbommel-Nijmegen 1991.

3 W o u d e, Ad van der: Europe without boundaries, its culture and the archivist, in: Janus 1992/2, p. 251- 254.

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