ABSTRACT
The basic structure of the Historical Archives of the European Communities is chiefly determined by the organization, functions, and activities of those Communities. The legal basis for the Archives in Florence is constituted by two decisions of the European Coal and Steel Community High Authority and of the Council of 1 and 8 February 1983, respectively and by the agreement between the Commission and the European University Institute of 17 December 1984. The European Historical Archives should be built up into central archives of the European Community with the task, which should be specified precisely, of technical coordination of all work procedures in the archives of the individual institutions. The central archives in Florence initially have, by contrast, as archives at the end of a series of other archives, only the task of taking over original documents and presenting them to users, but even this is not an exclusive competence of the Florence archives.
