From the Tower of Babel to the European Parliament:The importance of the European integration project

This publication is the result of the work and discussion by participants in the 2019 conference History of the European Parliament: research projects, sources and historical memory 1979-2019, organised by the Association of Friends of the Historical Archives of the European Union together with the Historical Archives of the European Union and the House of History of Europe. The conference was organised to mark the fortieth anniversary of the election of the European Parliament by universal suffrage. It brought together archivists, academics, former senior officials and well-known European parliamentarians to focus in particular on tracing the evolution of Parliament's historiography since the ECSC Consultative Assembly, and its acceleration following the Single Act and the Maastricht Treaty. This publication presents an inventory of the sources, written and oral, historical and memorial, as well as a revisitation of various research projects bearing on or relating to the history of a European institution whose role and legislative and budgetary powers have steadily increased since its first term of office.