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)

4. Session/Séance: Palayret, Towards a new History of Europe

fications of holdings and the regulations governing communication of them have been set up in narrow national frameworks and schemes.

Secondly, a user who has managed to identify the usable material may be discouraged by its extreme geographical and administrative dispersal. It is the nature of the archival heritage of a Europe united by its differences, a hotchpotch of disparate systems, culture heritages and languages, to be broken up not only among the official national and trans-national institutions, but also among the archives of a multiplicity of foundations, associations or private individuals.

For a clue to this labyrinth, all the archive user has available is a superannuated, though still useful, guide. I have in mind the pioneering work Sources for the History of European Integration" to which the most competent historians and archivists of European integration at the time gave their assistance. Thirteen years later, there has still been no up-date.

1. Official archives of trans-national European organizations

a) The Archives of the European Communities

In early 1983, the Community institutions, the Commission, the Council, the European Parliament, the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors and the Economic and Social Committee, agreed to make their documents available to research and to the public on a thirty-year rule, in historical archives set up for the purpose within each institution12. This decision was aimed both at supplying a solid documentary basis for research relating to the history of Community integration and at promoting the idea of a European identify by enhancing the transparency of the Community’s institutional functioning, which remained obscure to the European public that could only try to grasp it through the selective prism of official communiqués and diplomatic reports.

This choise did raise a few problems in terms of the life cycle of the documents concerned. Since the three „ages“ of archives (current, intermediate and historical) were to constitute an organic unity at the level of each institution, this meant, at the level of the Community as a whole, that sources were scattered among five archival services split between the towns of Brussels and Luxembourg.

There were liable to be considerable difficulties in using them because of the perverse effects that might result from the different handling of the evaluation, formation and transmission of files.

Moreover, each institution might be tempted to make protection of information it held take precedence over research interests.

This concern for confidentiality - legitimate when based on criteria of rational and appropriate classification (legislation on the secrecy applying to certain files on 1

1 Lip gens, Walter (ed.): Sources for the History of European Integration 1945-1955. A guide to the archives in the countries of the Community. Florence 1980.

Hofmann, Hans: Ouverture au public des archives historiques des Communautés Européennes. EC Publications Office. Luxembourg 1983.

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