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/Séance: Brejon de Lavergnée, New economic Zones and their Archives

functions, transcend the frontiers of states, as do the institutions, which give rise to them. It is thus probable that traditional institutional, legislative and administrative frameworks of each country are no longer suitable. The management, concentration, transmission and legislation need, therefore to be rethought in European terms. How then are we to prepare ourselves for this archival Europe. We, as archivists are invited, each and everyone of us, to bend our minds to thinking about the organisation of archive services.

It is our intention in this paper to study and attempt to define the problems facing the archives of new European economic zones. So as to carry it through to a successful conclusion it would be proper to begin by introducing the bodies and institutions which produce them.

Regional economic Cooperation

When speaking of new European economic zones, the mind immediately turns to thoughts about the appearance of regions on the European scene. Regions are indeed directly affected by the Single Act since their role, in this new space without frontiers is strengthend in sofar as economic development is concerned. On the one hand the Commission of the European Community, supported by the European Parliament, seeks to rely more on regions in order to circumvent the protection et reservations of states: on the other hand, countries with very powerful regions want to enforce an economic rationale with a regional content, which at the same time gives rise to an environment favouring the creation and growth of the business sector; lastly the general feeling in the regional scale makes it easier to explain the daily life of inhabitants and so brings it closer to the renote European authorities, thanks to the information provided by representatives of the regions, who are, according to the official nomenclature laid down by the European Community, one hundred and nineteen in number; but there are considerable disparities between them in legal prerogatives, demography, financial power and economies1.

If politicians, then, want to make promotors of economic development of regions, they must all be given a European dimension and, therefore, there must be more agreements for cooperation and partnership in order to develop new inter-regional stability. It is, moreover, a good thing that this need is to be found in economic stat1 The resources, which regions have at their disporal are not all of the same order. In Belgium and West Germany the aggregated budgets of regions represent 40 % of the national budget, in Spain 25 %, in Italy 15 % and in France 2 %. The disparities are enormous both in demographic and economic terms: So, in Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia is a region which weighs heavily in the economic balance with a population of 16.7 millions and quarter of the German Gross Domestic Product (GDP), followed by two other weighty regions, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, whilst in France only the Ile de France is a weighty region with a GDP which is less than those for the two weighty German regions. In terms of income per capita, the revenues of the ten regions at the top of the scale are three times as great as those of the ten regions at the bottom of the scale; cf. Baudis, D.: L’Europe des régions, in: France-Forum, n° 277-8 (april-june 1992).

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