Question 16232 — archives and libraries

Summary

Mr. Tematai Le Gayic draws the attention of the Minister of the Armed Forces to the declassification of archives and documents relating to French nuclear tests. By a letter dated July 7, 2021, the President of the Republic informed the President of Maohi nui (current French Polynesia) of the organization of a round table to address the issue of nuclear tests in Maohi nui. On November 18, 2022, the first archives were opened. Since then, real archival progress has been noted from the point of view of declassification practices and the sensitivity of certain state actors to the Polynesian file and the nuclear legacies in Maohi Nui. Thus, certain administrations such as the Defense Historical Service (SHD), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) and the National Archives of France (ANF) support researchers by allowing them to to access the archives, despite the difficulty arising from the law of accessing archives after 1974. Exemptions are granted the majority of the time. However, certain services choose not to apply the decision of the President of the Republic. On the one hand, the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) continues to evade researchers' requests by not paying its funds to the ANF. The CEA does not make its archives available to the public in a dedicated room and confines itself to a logic of offering by email: showing a few rare documents while avoiding the general mapping of sources which would allow targeted requests to be made from an inventory. On the other hand, the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA), which examines requests submitted to the Committee for Compensation for Victims of Nuclear Tests (CIVEN) does not seem to submit its archives to the SHD. These are considerable resources that researchers do not have access to. He therefore asks whether access to nuclear archives, apart from any sensitive or strategic documents, will be facilitated so that research and historical restitution work on nuclear power can be successful.

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