Fonds of Members of the European Parliament
The European Parliament is made up of 720 Members elected in the 27 Member States of the enlarged European Union. Since 1979, MEPs have been elected by direct universal suffrage for a five-year period.
What are Fonds?
Fonds are the "whole of the records, regardless of form or medium, organically created and/or accumulated and used by a particular person, family, or corporate body in the course of that creator's activities and functions" (General International Standard Archival Description, Second Edition, 1999). For example, the Fonds of an MEP will contain any and all documents saved by that MEP during their time working in Parliament and may include documents from committees they were on, delegations they were part of, etc.
What's in these Fonds:
The Archives of the European Parliament keep the fonds of Members and former Members of the European Parliament whose contribution has been particularly important for the development of the European Union. The documents are a unique testimony of political and parliamentary work, tracing the different procedures and the working system of drafting parliamentary reports. By demonstrating the work done by Members and their assistants, they illustrate the interactions between Members, political groups and civil society.
These fonds can reflect all the activities of a Member during his or her term of office, or simply contain documents relating to a specific procedure or a particular subject that the Member worked on. The contents of the files therefore vary, but are generally based on:
- Parliamentary activities as deputies or members of committees, or resulting from other responsibilities within Parliament
- Political activities as members of a political group or in their national constituencies
- Activities as a public figure (press, articles, publications, events)
How MEP's documents join the Archives:
Members’ documents don't belong to the European Parliament. However, any Member may decide to entrust the European Parliament at any time with documents created during his or her term of office and deposit into the Archives for processing and dissemination purposes. The decision of the Bureau of the Parliament of 10 March 2014 established the procedure for the acquisition of private archives of Members and former Members by the European Parliament.
