Digitization of the Foreign Ministry’s archive forms a foundation for shaping future policy

“Every attempt […] to organize, gather, and classify material related to critical moments in Greek history, to our country’s journey through time, is an effort of exceptional importance – especially when it concerns Greek diplomacy,” stated Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis on Monday, during the presentation of a project to digitize the Diplomatic and Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As he noted, “Greek diplomacy has had enormous achievements to show in the course of time and carries a particular historical weight in shaping not only the current territory of Greece but also Greece’s position in the world.”

Gerapetritis said the project involved the digitization of more than 31 million pages of the foreign ministry’s valuable archival material and constituted “a particularly important moment of transparency.”

He noted that the effort had begun more than 10 years ago, with the digitization of roughly four million pages using NSRF funding and today marked the implementation of yet another phase, with 31 million pages using funds from Greece’s National Plan under the Recovery and Resilience Facility.

The minister also highlighted the technical demands involved, to avoid damaging exceptionally sensitive archival material that was decades or even centuries old in the process of digitization.
Gerapetritis underlined that the digitized documents will be made available – except for certain classified ones – to the research community for use and evaluation.

“The accountability of history must be based on evidence. And this evidence must be objective in nature,” he pointed out. While everyone was entitled to their own subjective opinion and evaluation, he added, “the objective evidence that composes our history is what any evaluation and accountability should be built upon.”

He also mentioned that the digitization of the Ministry’s archive forms a foundation for shaping future policy. “Historical memory is what actually shapes the conditions for a successful future. No one has built successfully without building on the past – not only on its great moments, but mainly on its failures,” he noted.

amna.gr