Ilze Juhansone, Secretary-General of the European Commission, and Marco Del Panta, Secretary General of the European University Institute (EUI), signed a new Framework Partnership Agreement between the two institutions. The Agreement came into force on 17 March 2023, and confirms the mission of the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU).
The European Union and the EUI have been partners in the management of the historical archives of the European Union since 1984. This cooperation was based on the Council Regulation 354/83 and was last amended in 2015.
According to the new five-years Framework Partnership Agreement, the purpose of the partnership and deposit of the EU historical archives at the HAEU at the EUI is to ‘preserve and provide access to the EU archives from a single location, to promote their consultation, to stimulate research and to promote public interest in the history of European integration and the European institutions’.
The HAEU does this though a range of actions, including continuous development of its online databases and consultation instruments; by facilitating research and leveraging the EUI’s academic resources to promote the archives; through its educational programme and outreach activities to the public; by acquiring private archives that increase knowledge about the history of the construction of Europe; and by building synergies and increasing cooperation with depositing institutions to raise efficiency in the management of the EU historical archives.
The new agreement also continues its strong emphasis on the digitisation of documents and the importance of online digital access through the HAEU’s digital archives management system and through the Archives Portal Europe.