Since its establishment in 1983, the purpose of the Historical Archives Service of the European Commission has been to communicate, in accordance with the rules, the European Commission’s historical heritage as part of the common cultural heritage. There are 40 people working there. The reading room, located in Brussels, is easily accessible.

The tasks of the Historical Archives Service are:

• to collect paper or digital documents drawn up or received by the Commission, organised into files and with legal or historical value;
• to update and describe them and place them in their historical context;
• to ensure their retention and authenticity, in particular by implementing a long-term digital retention infrastructure;
• to make them available through online tools, its reading room and the searches carried out by the archivists to respond to internal and external queries.

Thus the Historical Archives Service is the bridge between the Commission on the one hand and the research community and the public on the other hand. This is shown by the diversity of its users: staff from the Commission and the Institutions, as well as national authorities, academics, journalists, lawyers, etc. The requests made by researchers are varied: some want one specific document, others need numerous files to enable them to carry out extensive research. This service can be considered the guardian of the European Commission’s documentary heritage and therefore makes a vital contribution to building the future of the European Union.
Archiving process:

• selecting files with a historical, legal or administrative value for permanent retention;
• removing files that have reached the end of their administrative or legal retention period and which do not have historical value;
• making public, where appropriate, documents marked classified when they were created;
• conducting a historical analysis of the files retained to facilitate searches;
• ensuring the long-term storage of files (technical processing and production of digital copies to facilitate back-up);
• lastly, transferring the original files to the final depository, located at the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) in Florence.

The legal basis for the archive services of the European institutions is Council Regulation (EEC, Euratom) No 354/83, amended by Regulation 1700/2003 and Regulation 496/2015.