Posted on 05 August 2014
Peter Sutherland, a renowned Irish international businessman and former Attorney General of Ireland, has deposited his private papers to the Historical Archives of the European Union. The documents will be opened to the research community in early 2015 and the inventory to the collection published on the HAEU online database. At a later stage, the documents will be digitised and made available online.
“The quality of the material can only serve to whet the appetite of academics to the inner workings of the Community in the important fields of competition such as state aid, mergers, cartels and anti-trust”, states Mary Carr, an archivist at the HAEU.
Peter Sutherland was appointed Commissioner in 1985 for competition policy and, initially for 1985 only, also for education, where he was involved in the establishment of the ERASMUS programme. As a member of the Commission in charge of Competition and Relations with the European Parliament, Sutherland and his Cabinet dealt with the opening up of competition across Europe, particularly in the airline, telecoms and energy sectors.
He was the youngest serving member of the first Jacques Delors Commission and he appointed future influential personalities in European circles such as Catherine Day and David O’Sullivan to his Cabinet. He was nominated Chairman of the Committee that produced The Sutherland Report on the completion of the Internal Market of the Community which was commissioned by the European Commission and presented to the Council at the Summit in Edinburgh in 1992.
In recognition of his work on behalf of the Community he was honoured with many awards including, the Robert Schuman Medal for his work for European integration and European Person of the Year (1988). His Commissionership ended in January 1989 and Sutherland went on to serve in a variety of international organisations, political and business roles. His intellect, business acumen and charismatic personality are clearly reflected in his papers and the HAEU is privileged to become the curator of such an important historical patrimony.
The Peter Sutherland papers were transferred to the Historical Archives of the European Union at the end of March 2014 thanks to a cooperation agreement with the Archives Department of University College Dublin, interim custodian of the material, and a contract of deposit signed between Sutherland and the EUI.