What is EUDiA?
EUDiA (European Union Diplomatic Archives) is the Group of the Archives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the EU member states and institutions.

The project
History of establishing diplomatic relations between the EU member states
This exhibition is the first result of a project that seeks to shed light on the complex history of bilateral diplomatic relations between EU member states.

One might expect that basic data on Europe’s rich diplomatic history should already have been available for a long time – that is not the case. Actually, the EUDiA members came up with the idea for this project as a result of the many requests that most of them receive concerning the exact date of the establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries and other states, European or not. What they realised was that in most cases there was not an exact date or even a single date for these events. And that has always been an issue for research and interpretation.

This project attempts, for the first time, to harmonise these data within the EU member states and create a database containing all the available data on the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations.
In this exhibition, on every banner one country presents its view of the establishment of diplomatic relations with a few other member states.

The dates presented may be:
a. the date of the presentation of credentials of the first diplomatic representative, or
b. the date of an exchange of Verbal Notes (the date the exchange is completed), or
c. the date of a joint communiqué, or
d. the date of the (unilateral) nomination of the first diplomatic representative, or
e. the date when the receiving state has accepted this first nominated diplomatic representative, or
f. the date of the foundation of an Embassy, or
g. the date of the signing of a treaty establishing diplomatic relations.

The EUDiA understands that the recognition of the independence of a state, the establishment of diplomatic relations, the establishment of consular relations and the establishment of conventional relations are four different concepts; while they may sometimes coincide, they do not have the same meaning. The current EUDiA project refers exclusively to the establishment of diplomatic relations.

The full database can be found online.

We hope the project and the exhibition are useful to researchers and interesting to the citizens of Europe.

Text, on behalf of the EU Diplomatic Archives:
David Schriffl (Austria) and Georgios Polydorakis (Greece)

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