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

metres of archives to Florence. Today, Florence houses all the essential holdings for studying the commencement and early operation of the Community process: minutes of meetings of the High Authority, the Special Council of Ministers and Common Assembly of the ECSC, files of the EEC and EURATOM Commission and Council and of the European Parliamentary Assembly (committees) through 1962.

b) International Organizations for European Cooperation

This example has been followed, since two international organizations in the front rank of European cooperation have agreed in their turn to deposit their definitive archives in the premises of the European Community Historical Archives:- The archives of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) were officially opened to the public at the Florence Institute on 16 November 1992. They document the work of the OEEC (Organization for European Economic Cooperation) which institutionalized the first stage in the reorganization of post-war Europe. Set up in 1948 to allocate and distribute Marshall Plan aid and develop an economic recovery programme for the countries of Western Europe, the OEEC coordinated the development of Member States in the areas of agriculture, industry, energy and technology, contributing to the process of freeing of trade and convertibilization of currencies in Europe (European Payments Union). In 1961, its task accomplished, the OEEC was replaced by the OECD, which extended membership to the United States, Canada and Japan.- The European Space Agency has deposited in Florence the archives of the pioneering organizations for space cooperation, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) and ELDO (European Launcher Development Organization), which preceded its own creation in 1975.

These additional deposits, the result of an ambitious acquisition policy, enhance the interest of the mandated transfers from the Community institutions for research by broadening the framework, and progressively transforming the Florence Historical Archives into „archives of the history of European integration“.

It should be stressed that the Florence initiative has, in the case of the two organizations mentioned, speeded the procedures for declassifying files and acted as a catalyst for embryonic or totally non-existent document administration programmes. The archives of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe were from the outset regarded as public documents as far as the plenary sessions were concerned. The archives of the Bureau and of the Committees are declassified after 25 years and those of the Committee of Ministers after 30 years15. They contain information on the working of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the Council’s relations with other European organizations and on cultural affairs and education in Europe.

15 Bishop, Keith: Les Archives du Conseil de l’Europe, in: Rivista di Studi politice intemationali, anno LX (1993) n° 237, p. 119-136.

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