Posted on 20 September 2018
The minutes of Council and Coreper sessions of the Council of Ministers of the EEC and Euratom from 1975 to 1985 have been transferred to the Historical Archives of the European Union by the Council’s Archives service and the inventories prepared by the Council have been made available online on the website of the HAEU. The files reflect for the most part the activities of the Council during its everyday operations. Furthermore the legal acts for the years 1976 and 1978 have also been made accessible.
For the first time, these files are also available online in digital format on the HAEU website. This online access facilitates access to these key holdings on the decision-making in the European Communities of the time. The production and transfer of microfiche copies has been suppressed and the digital access to the Council archives will allow optimal preservation conditions for the original and unique paper documents, which are nowadays only moved out of the long term storage vault for exhibition purposes.
Also, other important archival fonds have been made available for the first time online, such as the documents concerning the European Political Community (CPE) which were transferred to Florence in 2015 and that cover the years 1952-1954. Another relevant set of archives was also made accessible online and concerns the first three enlargements to the European Communities of 1973, 1981 and 1985. Finally, the documents covering the negotiations with the African states and Madagascar (EAMA 1958-1975) and the 1975 Lomé Convention on trade and aid between the European Economic Community (EEC) and 71 African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries, were transferred and made available online on the website of the HAEU.
Approximately 5,400 archival files were transferred since 2015 from Brussels and have been made available online, which can be accessed here.