Undesirable Barriers of Access to Archives in Light of the Council of Europe’s Pan-European Study

The Council of Europe commissioned a second pan-European study on the accessibility of public archives in the early 2020s, twenty years after the first such survey. As the CoE’s official reports and the recent publications on the findings of the study attest, the overall level of accessibility, the legality and the compliance with the Recommendation has improved significantly in Eu rope over the past two decades. However, this paper focuses on the undesir able barriers that remain in some countries´ archives due to past practices and archival practices.