The Prime Minister’s rapporteur presented his conclusions in the debate on access to French public archives. A collective of historians and archivists had taken it on the law text IGI1300 which prevents automatic declassification of archives over 50 years old.
Its opinion is advisory only, but it is usually very influential. For Prime Minister Alexandre Lallet, the rapporteur is the need to declassify the administrations of sensitive archives over 50 years before they are opened to citizens “only in the spirit” of the General Secretariat for Defense and Security Citizens (SGDSN).
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Responsible for expressing “in complete independence” about the dispute that has arisen from historians and proposing a solution before the Prime Minister’s deliberations. The rapporteur considered it “illegal” the way in which the legal text IGI 1300 has been applied for two years. According to him, this application is contrary to the principle of free communication of public archives, after the 50-year period established by the Inheritance Code in 2008.
By proposing “abruptly suspend” the application of the paragraph in the text concerning archives, the rapporteur agrees with the collective of historians and archivists “Access to public archives”, which had taken the Prime Minister in January 2021. He condemns an obstacle to researchers’ freedom to document France’s past , to carry out its activities and to hold public authorities accountable for their actions.
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Even more difficult, the judge sees in the application of IGI 1300 a doctrine “which seems to have been invented for the needs of the case in 2010, when the government realized that the archives of the Algerian war would gradually fall within the public sphere”.
Impact on Parliament’s debate?
These conclusions may affect parliamentary debates, while the law on terrorism and intelligence is being examined in the Senate committee. Article 19 of the bill, which was voted by the Assembly in early June, does indeed err in the restrictive treatment of the IGI1300, but introduces a new series of exceptions to the principle of automatic declassification of documents.
An article that creates new concerns in the society of historians, for whom “the balance between opening and closing public archives” promoted by the government in this law “is just a hoax, because the opening is only a reminder of the law already applicable and abused “by IGI 1300,” while the closure is very real “.
It validates the action taken by historians, archivists and lawyers for almost two years. This justifies their claims that they were provisions that were contrary to the law, contrary to academic freedoms.
Pierre Mansat, chairman of the Josette Association and Maurice Audin, member of the collective “Access to public archives”
Alexandre Lallet also refers to Article 19 in his recommendations. While acknowledging that certain documents intended to be declassified in exceptional cases may contain “very sensitive information”, he proposes a framework for exemptions that is narrower than that proposed by law, specifying that only one document that “would expose France to a serious threats to national security ”should potentially be affected by access restrictions.
At the beginning of June, the collective “Access to public archives” had already tried to limit the restrictive effects of the bill by working with the group of Ecological, Democracy and Solidarity (EDS) deputies to change the text, without success. Historians are now counting on senators from all walks of life, with whom the work of drafting amendments has already begun, to develop Article 19 “in a more protective sense of the fundamental right of access to public archives” during the review of the text on 29 June and 30.
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