From its establishment in 1958, the EURATOM Commission made use of official seals to authenticate certain documents, although without a strictly unified model. Visually, these seals take the form of circular stamps, sometimes applied in ink, sometimes embossed, and occasionally impressed in red wax, notably on constituent [CM1.1]minutes. Their presence, often discreet, is never insignificant: when affixed to a document, the seal acts as a visual signature that attests to the institutional origin of the act and confers upon it an official value.
One of the major issues at stake lies in the visual uniqueness of the seal. When several identical seals circulate within the same administration, the image of authority they convey becomes blurred: it becomes impossible to determine which department, or which specific authority, is responsible for the document. For a still young European institution, such confusion weakened the symbolic force of the seal, whose primary function is precisely to make the authority visible and identifiable.
After four years of tangible laissez-faire, in 1962 an internal action aimed at clarifying the use of seals within the EURATOM Commission, was entrusted to the Executive Secretary, Paul Bähr. Tasked with identifying the existing models, he highlighted the presence of identical seals used by different departments, which posed the problem of legibility and accountability. He organised their withdrawal, centralised the storage of unused seals, supervised the creation of new, distinct models, and ensured that each seal was clearly assigned to a specific responsible official. Through this action, Paul Bähr helped to restore the visual and symbolic coherence of the Commission’s documents, reminding the administration that the seal is not a mere administrative accessory, but a sign of authority that commits the institution. This sheds light on the use of the seal in an administrative context…
… but leaves us somewhat unsatisfied as to the actual uses to which it may have been put. There exist certain examples of the application of the Executive Secretariat’s seal in red wax impressions. This is notably the case on the minutes of the very first meeting of the EURATOM Commission, held on 29 January 1958. The seal is affixed to the left of the heading, over two white hemp cords, as if to bear witness to its extrinsic existence. Indeed, no other reason seems to explain its presence, other than the sole probative intention of attesting to the existence of the Executive Secretariat’s seal, functioning almost as an incipit to the minutes of that body’s meetings.
In subsequent sets of minutes, several other impressions of this same seal appear. No convincing line of interpretation allows their precise function to be explained: they seem to serve to validate the authenticity of certain annexes attached to the documents. Yet the symbolic action of sealing contrasts sharply with the rather mundane content of these minutes. The history of the methods used to authenticate the Commission’s acts is, admittedly, poorly documented. Indeed, the use of the seal had become entirely obsolete, a relic of a past exoticism whose symbolic meaning can not longer be recalled.
Over time, the use of the seal tended to lose its original symbolic significance. It became a technical tool among others, sometimes replaced by more modern devices for the aggregation and authentication of archival documents. This evolution shows that the seal, while remaining a powerful visual object, is also dependent on changes in administrative practices and institutional memory: when its meaning is no longer made explicit, it may become a discreet vestige of an earlier symbolic culture.
Sealed Mission
The administrative seal of the EURATOM Commission : archives of an authority in the making
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