The new law on archiving in Luxembourg came into force earlier this week on Monday 1 September 2018.
The archiving law of 17 August 2018, which came into effect on 1 September 2018, introduces the improved management of information and archives at the national level, considered essential for maintaining the collective memory of Luxembourg and for the proper functioning of the public administration. The law also enables the National Archives of Luxembourg (ANLux) to guarantee the safeguarding of and access to this national archival heritage.
More specifically, the new legislation provides that archives of historical, scientific, economic, societal and cultural national interest, produced by state administrations, must be given to the ANLux once their period of administrative utility has ended. The citizen thus has the guarantee that after a certain period - which varies according to the time of communication - all these archives will be made accessible to historical research.
In addition, the archives of state institutions such as the Chamber of Deputies, the Luxembourg courts, the Grand-Ducal Court, the Ombudsman, the Court of Auditors and public institutions of the State are also defined as "public archives". Thus, these producers, even if they keep their own archives, are responsible for the proper management and communication of their documents to researchers in accordance with the principles of the law. Regarding municipal archives, whilst these are not subject to all the provisions of the law, the municipal authorities must inform the ANLux before destroying any documents.
The law also provides for a number of provisions concerning private archives, including those whose conservation is of public interest; these may be classified as "historical private archives". The cultural institutes involved assist the owners of these archives in their management and conservation.
The deadlines for the communication of the public archives kept in the ANLux have thus also been modified by the new law: rather than making documents accessible following a 30-year period from the creation date of the document, this will be once they are no longer needed by an administraton. They will thus be accessible more quickly than in most European countries. Special deadlines apply to certain documents containing personal data (25 years after death or 75 years after the date of the document), for public records the disclosure of which would undermine external relations, the security of the Grand Duchy and public order (50 years after the date of the document), as well as for public archives related to tax privacy (100 years after the date of the document).
