The Commission published a Communication with the summary of the Progress Report to the Council on the implementation of Council Recommendation 2005/835/EC of November 14th 2005 on priority actions to increase cooperation in the field of archives in Europe presented by the European Archives Group (EAG).

In 2003 the Council recognised the challenges that archives were facing on the eve of the enlargement of the Union with ten new Member States. The Council called then for an assessment of the situation of public archives in the EU, taking particular account of enlargement, and asked the Commission to submit a report that would address the possibilities for enhanced co-ordination and co-operation.

The Report on Archives led to Council Recommendation 2005/835/EC on priority actions to increase cooperation in the field of archives in Europe of November 14th 2005.

After this provision, the European Archives Group (EAG) was created at the beginning of 2006 comprising experts from all 27 Member States of the European Union as well as from five European institutions. Since its inaugural meeting in April 2006, the EAG has met once every semester to discuss the progress achieved in the implementation of the Council Recommendation and to provide guidance and general orientations for the work undertaken on the five priority actions.

For the implementation of a number of the priority measures the EAG has sought to co-operate with other relevant networks and sectors, such as the DLM Forum and the European Branch of the International Council on Archives (EURBICA). The archives sector is also actively participating in the European Digital Library Foundation and is represented on the High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries and the European Digital Library Project (EDL) interoperability working group.

Progress has been achieved with regard to all five priority measures of the Council Recommendation of November 2005.

• Preservation and disaster prevention: After the publication of the recommendation a tri-national working group on preservation and prevention of damage to archives, chaired by the German Bundesarchiv, was established.
• European interdisciplinary co-operation on electronic documents and archives: In co-operation with the Commission, the DLM Forum has developed the updated and extended version of the Model requirements for the management of electronic records (MoReq2). The DLM Forum will ensure MoReq2 governance and promote compliance testing for MoReq2 compliant software.
• The establishment and maintenance of an internet portal for documents and archives in Europe: The proposal to establish an internet portal for archives in Europe aims at making Europe's diverse archival material kept by private or public cultural heritage institutions easier to access and to use online for work, leisure and/or study.
• Promotion of best practice with regard to national and European legislation regarding archives: A working group to develop a legal database for archives in Europe is led by the Direction des Archives de France in cooperation with the European branch of the International Council on Archives (EURBICA). The legal database was presented to the Commission in June. The content will be provided by the Member States and the European institutions during the second half of 2008. The database will be maintained by the member states and hosted by the International Council on Archives (ICA).
• Measures to prevent theft of archival documents: A working group for measures to prevent theft in archives, led by the Swedish Riksarkivet, presented in June 2007 a report to the EAG on theft in archives based on a survey of almost 200 archives throughout Europe. The working group has furthermore prepared a draft declaration on the prevention of theft in archives and the fight against their illegal trade for adoption by the Heads of the National Archives of the 27 Member States.

The Group has also identified five challenges to be fulfilled in the future proposing that Archives Services should reflect on their role in a rapidly evolving environment and examine how they can better serve society in general and public administration in particular. Those five challenges are:

• The European Directive for the re-use of public sector information
• The relationship between on-site and on-line access to archives
• Digital record keeping: consequences for administration and society and the changing role of Archives
• Creation of a European expertise network
• Plan for a centre of excellence for European archivists

The report concludes that co-operation between the archives of the Member States has moved forward since the adoption of the Council Recommendation at the end of 2005, being surprisingly successful over the last two decades.