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)

The absence of efficient record management, or inaccessibility, still keep closed a number of other international organizations (with a European orientation) to any exploitation of essential holdings for the scientific community:- CERN in Geneva is, to be sure, an exception. As with the European Space Agency, the liberal attitude (opening after 15 years) displayed by this scientific organization is due to the fact that the problems arising have not generally led to particular disputes (with the exception of the „fair return“ appealed to by Member States in favour of national industries), and that technical and scientific „secrets“ rapidly become obsolescent and move very quickly into the public domain.- GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) does not seem to keep archives in the strict sense of the term. It nonetheless maintains a full collection of official or semi-official documents accessible (at least those over 30 years old) to researchers who secure accreditation.- EFTA (the Free Trade Association) has no rule on declassification and access.- The archives of NATO (the Nort Atlantic Treaty Organization) remain hermetically closed, thereby blocking access to Alliance documents conserved in the various national archives. However, there is some hope that things might develop positively, and the organizations’s archivists share this awareness.

2. Member States’ Public Archives

The present trends in historiography and the archival tradition combine to make the public archives of Member States the favoured source for all research having to do with integration.

The papers of national governments and administrations are, in all Member States, classified and conserved in general or federal archives or „public record offices“. In France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Belgium and Spain, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and sometimes Defence run separate archives. From the legislative viewpoint, the thirty-year rule is now general in Community countries, with some Member States even contemplating shortening it.

There remain a number of exceptions, which should be listed, with an indication of their legal justifications:

The archives of the United Kingdom illustrate the problem fairly well. The thirty- year rule is applied, including cabinet papers and the most important ministerial archives16 *. At any rate, that is the theory. The practice is sometimes different. The name „Public Records Office“ is deceptive, since declassifying remains essentially the responsibility of Whitehall officials. The „Public Records Act“ gives full discretion to government departments on documents to be made available and those to be kept under lock and key. For reasons of security, but also of convenience for some ministries, the series of documents on British atomic policy and the Suez crisis, es4. Session/Séance: Palayret, Towards a new History of Europe

16 As demonstrated by the disclosure in 1991, on expiry of the legal limit, of some of the MacMillan

government reports discussing the advisability of embarking on negotiations to join the Common Market.

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