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 experiment will be developed elsewhere if the EDZ remains settled in the area in the long term. What can in any case be said is that the kinds of cooperation within the Zone are as many and varied as they are on the European scale as a whole. There can be no doubt that, to ensure their survival, common legal and organisational structures which do not on the whole exist at present would be needed. But while these structures are being bom, surviving or disappearing, our special role as archivists is to keep up with this dynamism, with the successes and set backs of a Europe that is seeking its own identity and building itself up, by seizing the opportunity, through archives, to take part in this way of life, when ever it occurs. Archives Such a wide dispersal of creators of archives could discourage us. Indeed, in the absence of European legislation on archives, they run the risk of eluding us and of vanishing. Nevertheless, aware of the need for them in the process of management and of their great value for historical research, we are ready to fall up to the challenge and to embark on the acquisition and organisation of European archives, in the case of business archives, their being either public or private, again complicates matters. Facing up to the challenge placed before us leads us to think about the placement and transfer of archives. Nonetheless, it is not just a matter of finding if they do exist and of bringing them together but of knowing where to place them. We are also led to think about legislation, but in this field as well, we need to be practical and realistic and, therefore, to rely on the legal means available to us and to show consideration for the competence of bodies and institutions, and for want of a policy of compulsion to join in a policy of negotiation. Organisation It is no use mentioning the types of archives with which we are confronted. The description of the creating bodies will suffice to provide a picture of the archives they produce: planning files, management files; accounts of meetings, reports, proceedings, balance sheets, etc. On the other hand, it is important to wonder how to entrust these archives to professionals before they may be destroyed by whatever means may be used. Locating archives is not very difficult in itself if the bodies which produce them have a fixed location since it will then be enough to put together once again the list of the parties involved and to rediscover the public and private partners in cooperation agreements at local, national or European level. If the problem does not arise in the case of large European organisations with their own archive services, this does not apply to euroregions, Economic Development Zones and other joint co-operative bodies. 89
