The European Commission made a large transfer of historical archival material, in the form of paper documents and digitalised files, to the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) in September of this year.
The 125,000 files composing these new annual series (SEC) from 1965 to 1967 (under CCEE Fonds Group) and from July 1967 (after the administrative merge) to 1991 (under CEUE Fonds Group) are now available in the HAEU’s online database, within the newly structured collections of the Commission’s holdings. The documents are available in Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, and Italian, with the addition of Spanish, Portuguese and Greek for later items.
These materials concern the activities of the pivotal Secretariat of the Communities. They include documents regarding all of the affairs managed by the Registrar; reports, interoffice memoranda and correspondence about the internal organisation of the Communities; external relations towards other European institutions and international organisations, and more.
Before the multiplication of the competences of the Commission under the Cabinet of Jacques Delors, and the related creation of responsible bodies, the Secretariat played a fundamental role in the development of the Communities. The files of the SEC series reveal multiple insights for the reconstruction of the history of European integration, as the Secretariat played an advisory role in almost every area of Communitarian activities.
Now that many of these of these competences have been shifted to newer and more suitable organs of the institutions, the Secretariat now plays a more agile and effective role in the coordination of the administrative machinery of the Commission.