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

themselves up. In the Centre, several services are provided: reception and administrative information, translation, setting up of a board of directors, finance, data processing. Besides such usual services, the Centre is also able to accommodate very innovative services such as a business centre to help businesses with their projects, the Euro-information Centre to provide businesses with community information (Idelux operates this), a Priming Capital Fund, which offers a financial product likely to encourage the creation of businesses3. Added to which are Customs offices, a transit office and a duty free shop at Mont St. Martin, which allows businesses whose goods are stacked there to benefit from postponement of payment of duties and taxes, telecommunication equipment, etc.

If the EDZ often seems to project the image of closely interwoven national programmes there are however two factors, which give it its true scale of Europe at 1:1000 of the population: the Common Services Centre, which has just been mentioned, although it took a tripartite creation of businesses to overcome the obstacles raised by the present lack of European legislation on business creation4, and above all the European College of Technology, the only real community body. How did it come into being: At their meeting at Longwy in March 1990, the Belgian, French and Luxembourg Ministers for Training, showed themselves willing to extend trans- border cooperation to the field of training and gave concrete expression to this willingness by signing an agreement establishing the European College of Technology. To give this college an official legal status, Belgium, France and Luxembourg set up in each of the three countries a federated national organisation of training authorities. In France, this takes the form of a public interest body, which brings together leading figures in the economic and financial sectors as well as research and training organisations. Indeed the European College was not created ex nihilo but has developed from institutions of university, higher and secondary education and of continuing professional training within the area of the EDZ, all of which have joined together in the European College scheme.

The tripartite agreement, signed in 1991 between the three organisations uniting the educational resources in each country as well as the setting up of operational bodies give physical being to the college. It has premises in the Training School in the International Business Park, which also houses all the other partners in the training activities in the Zone, who have, for the most part signed the agreement to support the European College of Technology, which opened in May 1992.

3 This project groups together Belgian, French and Luxembourg partners from the banking sector. The European Communities Commission supports the project with a 50 % share in the capital of the priming fund and covers half the running costs.

4 The Priory Centre linked to the European College of Technology, the Athus Centre to the Container Terminal, the Three Point Centre in the trans-border sector. This arrangement makes full provision of services of a European and trans-border kind as are requested throughout the EDZ and IBP, while overcoming the obstacles attached to the present lack of European legislation on the subject of the creation of transnational businesses.

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