On 27 September 2022, the Historical Archives of the European Union received a large transfer from the Council of Ministers of the European Union (hereafter ‘the Council’), comprising a total of 498 boxes containing 2565 archival files.
The transfer contains the minutes of the Council and Permanent Representatives Committee (Coreper) sessions for the years 1990, 1991 and 1992, as well as the Legal Acts for those same years.
Another important set of files concerns the Lomé IV Agreement, which was signed in December 1989. Lomé IV set out trade provisions for the years 1990 to 1999, and included substantial aid and investment commitments for the 70 ACP countries party to the Agreement. Files sent in 2022 include chronologically only files from 1990 until 1996. The remaining Lomé IV files (1997-1999) are part of archival record group CM4, still at the General Secretariat of the Council.
A final series of documents pertains to the work of the Intergovernmental Conference responsible for examining the draft revision of the EEC Treaty (CM3/NEG07). The Conference concluded with the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, thus making these files particularly informative for the research community interested in the shaping of the Treaty of European Union (TEU).
All of the files have been digitised and may be consulted in the HAEU’s database.
About the Council
The Council of the European Union represents the member states of the EU and is the EU’s main decision-making body. It coordinates EU policies, develops the EU's foreign and security policy, concludes agreements between the EU and other countries or international organisations, and adopts, with the European Parliament, the annual EU budget.
Following the Council Regulation 2015/496 amending the original Archives Regulation 354/83, all EU institutions, bodies and agencies are obliged to deposit their archives at the HAEU. The HAEU preserves and makes accessible the archival holdings of EU institutions and agencies according to the 30 years rule governing access to archives of the European Union.