Posted on 24 April 2013
20 second-year students of the Archival School at the State Archives of Florence visited the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) for a half-day laboratory on the archival sources on the history of European integration.
During their visit on 12 April, the students were received by the HAEU Director Dieter Schlenker who illustrated the archives’ origins and its course throughout the last 30 years as part of the European University Institute in Florence. He gave an overview on the rich holdings of the archives which comprise the historical archives of the EU Institutions and 150 private archives of eminent personalities and pro-European movements and associations.
The archivists Gherardo Bonini and Andrea Becherucci gave an insight and hands-on experience on the treatment, inventorying, conservation and online access of the major holdings of European Institutions, those of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission. The archivists highlighted the various systems of classification and the treatment of these fonds once transferred to Florence as historical archives. The various challenges of archival work in an international, multi-organisational and multilingual environment were illustrated using original files from the various institutions. Also the conservation status of the paper and related measures such as microfilming and digitisation were discussed with active participation by the students.
A particular subject of discussion was the presence of official documents from EU institutions in private papers of former EU officials. Particularly in the early years of European institutions, as also in national governments, it was common practice that officials integrated copies or originals of official documents into their working files. In this way many documents have been handed down to us via deposited private papers.
It served as a practical study theme the part of Edoardo Martino’s fonds comprising the original examples of documents produced by his Cabinet such as when he was External Relations Commissioner, while the official Cabinet documents are still preserved at the Archives of the Commission in Brussels, although they have passed the general 30 years closure for EU archival files, while in many private archives deposited at the HAEU excerpts of Cabinet documents are present. Examples looked at were the files of Edoardo Martino, Altiero Spinelli, Franco Maria Malfatti, Carlo Scarascia Mugnozza, Lionello Levi Sandri and Albert Coppé.
At the end of the visit, the students were informed about internship opportunities at the HAEU and the two institutions confirmed their intentions of making this kind of laboratory part of the curriculum of the second-year course at the Archival School of Florence.
The Director of the Florence Archives School, Dr. Carla Zarrilli thanked the HAEU for hosting this working session and confirmed the strong interest of the young students in this “unique reality in Europe; a centre of archival preservation and of multilingual research on the European integration”.
More information on the Scuola di Archivistica dell’Archivio di Stato di Firenze
The holdings of the HAEU