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)

hold, in comparison, relatively few archives to do with European issues. In Italy, only the files to do with the Presidency of the EC Council, and among these the documents of De Gasperi’s private secretaries, supply useful information. In France, the presidential archives (since foreign policy often belonged to the president’s „domaine réservé“) and the reports of the interministerial councils that debated questions of European cooperation still remain inaccessible.

These gaps can be partly filled by the possibility of recourse to deposits of private papers of pro-European politicians. Such are those of Count Sforza (foreign minister between 1945 and 1951) or Ugo La Malfa, Leader of the Republican Party, unconditional Supporters of the European ideal in Italy; and of prime ministers Robert Schuman (departmental archives of the Moselle) and Paul Ramadier (departmental archives of Aveyron). The Pierre Mendes-France archives have been deposited with the Fondation des Sciences politiques.

In Belgium, Profesor Michel Dumoulin (University of Louvain), in his „Note on sources for European integration in Belgium“, published 1988, attributed the notable delays of Belgian historiography in relation to European integration to the

difficult conditions of access to unpublished sources due to their lack of classification or ... to the fact

that those responsible for their conservation feel it inappropriate to authorize consultation, invoking

the recency of the events where the reason given is not simply the destruction of the archives ...20

The progress achieved since then in terms of access to unpublished sources, even if not such as radically to alter this pessimistic statement, nonetheless appears encouraging. It is a commonplace in Belgium to say that the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are exceptionally rich, even if inexplicable, and unexplained, lacunae are found in them.

The series of „correspondance politique“ with the States concerned, CECA, CED, „Communauté politique européenne“, „Benelux“, „Administration belge de coopération économique“, all prove rich and interesting.

Belgian policy towards European integration will be still better illuminated by the publication of Belgian diplomatic documents, for the most part hitherto inaccessible, for the period from 1941 to 1960; volumes IV and V will deal with Europe and defence respectively.

The spirit of this collection is of particular interest for our subject, since the Royal Commission on History, as a deliberate choice, concentrated on the policy of interdependence pursued by Belgium in the period considered21.

The general archives of the Kingdom, for their part, conserve the Chancellery Archives, some files on which, not always accessible, concern the Schuman Plan, the Messina Conference and the Rome Treaties. The question of the organization of and

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

20 Dumoulin, M: La construction européenne en Belgique, 1945-1957 (aperçu des sources) CIACO, 1988. The work by P. von Ekhou dt and E. Witte: Bronnen voor de Studie van de hedendaagse Belgische samenleving (Bruxelles 1986) though in other respects remarkable, does not incorporate the whole of the European dimension.

21 Documents diplomatiques b el ge s, ed. by Commission royale d’histoire. Vol. 4: L’Europe, ed. by F. Peemans, G. Kurgan, E. Cerexehe and H. van Houtte; and Vol. 5: La Défense, ed. by L. Devos.

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