Ordinance
to the Federal Act on Archiving
(Archiving Ordinance)

¹ This Or­din­ance gov­erns the rights and ob­lig­a­tions of the bod­ies re­quired to of­fer their doc­u­ments to the Swiss Fed­er­al Archives (the Fed­er­al Archives) and the in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing bod­ies with­in the scope of the Act, the rights and ob­lig­a­tions of the Fed­er­al Archives, and ac­cess to and the com­mer­cial use of the archive re­cords.

² Un­less oth­er­wise provided be­low, the pro­vi­sions ap­ply by ana­logy to in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing bod­ies.

(Art. 1 ArchA)

¹ The Fed­er­al As­sembly, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil, the Par­lia­ment­ary Ser­vices, the Swiss Na­tion­al Bank and the fed­er­al bod­ies lis­ted in An­nex 1 and defined in Art­icle 1 para­graph 1 let­ters b – d and g of the Act shall fall with­in the scope of this Or­din­ance.

² The autonom­ous in­sti­tutes of the Con­fed­er­a­tion and sim­il­ar fed­er­al in­sti­tu­tions as per Art­icle 1 para­graph 1 let­ter e of the Act that are sub­ject to this Or­din­ance are lis­ted in An­nex 2.

³ Pub­lic or private law bod­ies in terms of Art­icle 1 para­graph 1 let­ter h of the Act are deemed to be per­sons or in­sti­tu­tions as­signed sov­er­eign com­pet­en­cies, spe­cific­ally powers of dis­pos­al, or sub­ject to full, dir­ect su­per­vi­sion by the Con­fed­er­a­tion in their en­force­ment tasks. The Fed­er­al De­part­ment of Home Af­fairs (De­part­ment) shall list these per­sons and in­sti­tu­tions in an or­din­ance.

⁴ The De­part­ment may amend or sup­ple­ment An­nexes 1 and 2 in con­sulta­tion with the rel­ev­ant bod­ies.

(Art. 2 para. 2 and Art. 5 paras. 2 and 3 ArchA)

¹ The bod­ies re­quired to of­fer their doc­u­ments to the Fed­er­al Archives shall en­sure that their activ­it­ies can be veri­fied and jus­ti­fied on the basis of those doc­u­ments. They shall take the or­gan­isa­tion­al, ad­min­is­trat­ive and tech­nic­al meas­ures ne­ces­sary for the pro­duc­tion and man­age­ment of doc­u­ments fit for archiv­ing.

² ...²

(Art. 6 ArchA)

¹ Doc­u­ments shall be deemed no longer con­stantly re­quired and hence must be offered to the Fed­er­al Archives when the body bound to make such of­fer is no longer us­ing them fre­quently and reg­u­larly. Such of­fer shall be made no later than five years after the last ad­di­tion to the re­cords.³

² The Fed­er­al Archives may ex­tend the term of para­graph 1 if the body re­quired to of­fer its doc­u­ments can sub­mit jus­ti­fic­a­tion that it still needs them.

³ Spe­cial cat­egor­ies of doc­u­ments shall be offered and, where ap­plic­able, trans­ferred im­me­di­ately after draft­ing or sig­na­ture. State Treat­ies shall be offered through the Dir­ect­or­ate of Pub­lic In­ter­na­tion­al Law. The Fed­er­al Archives shall reg­u­late the de­tails in dir­ect­ives.

(Arts. 5, 6 and 7 ArchA)

¹ The body re­quired to of­fer its doc­u­ments to the Fed­er­al Archives shall en­sure that the doc­u­ments are pre­pared so that they can be as­sessed for archiv­al value and, where ap­plic­able, archived without ex­tra ex­pense.

² The body re­quired to of­fer its doc­u­ments to the Fed­er­al Archives shall sug­gest which doc­u­ments are of archiv­al value from a leg­al and ad­min­is­trat­ive point of view.

³ Re­quire­ments for spe­cial re­ten­tion peri­ods un­der Art­icle 12 of the Act shall be in­dic­ated at the time of of­fer­ing.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Archives shall is­sue dir­ect­ives gov­ern­ing the de­tails of the ob­lig­a­tion to of­fer doc­u­ments to it and of their trans­fer.

(Arts. 7 and 8 ArchA)

¹ The Fed­er­al Archives shall de­cide wheth­er doc­u­ments should be per­man­ently archived, tak­ing ac­count of the sug­ges­tions of the body re­quired to of­fer its doc­u­ments to it. It shall as­sess the doc­u­ments offered us­ing his­tor­ic­al and archiv­al cri­ter­ia.

² If the Fed­er­al Archives and the body ob­liged to of­fer its doc­u­ments dis­agree on the archiv­al value of doc­u­ments, they shall be archived.

³ The Fed­er­al Archives shall co-op­er­ate with the in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing bod­ies to de­cide wheth­er such doc­u­ments are of archiv­al value.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Archives shall as­sess the archiv­al value of the doc­u­ments offered with­in a peri­od of one year. If it fails to reach a de­cision, the archiv­ing ob­lig­a­tion shall lapse. Such peri­od may be ex­ten­ded if the Fed­er­al Archives demon­strates that it can­not as­sess the doc­u­ments in time.

(Art. 4 paras. 3–5 ArchA)

¹ The Swiss Na­tion­al Bank and the autonom­ous fed­er­al in­sti­tu­tions and sim­il­ar fed­er­al in­sti­tu­tions des­ig­nated in An­nex 2 shall archive their doc­u­ments in­de­pend­ently.

² The oth­er pub­lic or private law bod­ies as per Art­icle 1 para­graph 1 let­ter h of the Act and Art­icle 2 para­graph 3 of the Or­din­ance who ful­fil en­force­ment tasks as­signed to them by the Con­fed­er­a­tion, the Fed­er­al Crim­in­al Court; Fed­er­al Ad­min­is­trat­ive Court and the Fed­er­al Ap­peal and Ar­bit­ra­tion Com­mis­sions as per Art. 1 para­graph 1 let­ter d of the Act (An­nex 1) shall in­form the Fed­er­al Archives wheth­er they wish to archive their doc­u­ments in­de­pend­ently.⁴

³ The Fed­er­al Archives shall agree to in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing in the terms of para­graph 2 if the con­di­tions of Art­icle 8 para­graph 1 are met.

⁴ If the bod­ies named in para­graph 2 do not carry out in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing, they shall be re­quired to of­fer their doc­u­ments to the Fed­er­al Archives. The Fed­er­al Archives may charge them the costs of such archiv­ing.

⁵ Bod­ies which carry out in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing shall, like fed­er­al de­part­ments and with­in their sphere of com­pet­ence, en­sure that their activ­it­ies can be veri­fied and jus­ti­fied on the basis of their doc­u­ments.

(Art. 4 paras. 3–5 ArchA)

¹ In­de­pend­ent archiv­ing bod­ies as per Art­icle 1 para­graph 1 let­ters d, e and h of the Act shall reach an agree­ment with the Fed­er­al Archives on the com­pos­i­tion, safe­keep­ing, pre­ser­va­tion and mak­ing ac­cess­ible of their doc­u­ments. They shall provide the ne­ces­sary hu­man, ac­com­mod­a­tion and fin­an­cial re­sources.

² The Fed­er­al Archives shall be au­thor­ised to in­spect re­gis­tries or in­form­a­tion man­age­ment units of such in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing bod­ies and to in­spect the con­di­tion of the doc­u­ments held there.

³ The Fed­er­al Archives may with­draw its con­sent to in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing or ap­ply for such with­draw­al if the archiv­ing ob­lig­a­tion is not be­ing ful­filled, or not ful­filled in ac­cord­ance with the prin­ciples of the Act.

⁴ In the event of re­voc­a­tion the costs of trans­fer, fur­ther archiv­ing and res­tor­a­tion of any dam­age in­curred shall be met by the body which pro­duces the doc­u­ments.

(Art. 24 para. 2 ArchA)

Where or­ders are per­formed un­der private law, the body pla­cing the or­der shall gov­ern the archiv­ing of the doc­u­ments be­fore­hand by con­tract after agree­ment with the Fed­er­al Archives.

(Arts. 9, 11 and 12 ArchA)

¹ Any­one shall have the right of ac­cess to the Con­fed­er­a­tion archive re­cords after ex­piry of the re­ten­tion peri­ods in Art­icles 9, 11 and 12 of the Act.

² The right to con­sult the archive re­cords shall com­prise in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

con­sulta­tion of re­search aids;

b.

con­sulta­tion of doc­u­ments;

c.

pho­to­graph­ic, pho­tomech­an­ic­al or di­git­al re­pro­duc­tion, sub­ject to con­ser­va­tion re­stric­tions; and

d.

the re­pro­duc­tion and fur­ther use of ob­tained in­form­a­tion, sub­ject to the leg­al pro­vi­sions pro­tect­ing per­son­al rights, es­pe­cially data pro­tec­tion.

(Art. 24 para. 1 ArchA)

¹ The ba­sic ser­vices of the Fed­er­al Archives such as sup­port in identi­fy­ing the doc­u­ments and al­low­ing con­sulta­tion shall be free of charge, in­so­far as this is com­pat­ible with ef­fi­cient ad­min­is­tra­tion.

² The costs of ad­di­tion­al ser­vices such as copy­ing shall be charged ac­cord­ing to time spent and costs of ma­ter­i­als.

³ The Fed­er­al De­part­ment of Home Af­fairs shall is­sue a fee sched­ule.

(Art. 17 para. 3 ArchA)

¹ Find­ing aids shall be freely ac­cess­ible to in­vest­ig­ate the archive re­cords and may be pro­duced and pub­lished for this pur­pose by the Fed­er­al Archives.

² Find­ing aids shall be cata­logues, lists, in­dices, con­ven­tion­al files, di­git­al files and oth­er aids al­low­ing ac­cess to the archive re­cords by enu­mer­at­ing or de­scrib­ing them.

³ Find­ing aids which, as such, con­tain sens­it­ive per­son­al data shall only be pub­lished after ex­piry of the re­ten­tion peri­od.⁵ Be­fore such ex­piry, pub­lic­a­tion shall only be per­mit­ted in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 11 and 13 of the Act.

(Art. 10 ArchA)

¹ The re­ten­tion peri­od shall as a rule cov­er a whole file or trans­ac­tion.

² The year of the most re­cent doc­u­ment shall serve as the basis for set­ting the re­ten­tion peri­od. Doc­u­ments ad­ded later which con­tain no in­form­a­tion of rel­ev­ance to the mat­ter shall not count to­wards the re­ten­tion peri­od.

³ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity may re­lease doc­u­ments still covered by the re­ten­tion peri­od if:

a.

the main fo­cus of the re­search is on doc­u­ments dated out­side the re­ten­tion peri­od;

b.

if con­tex­tu­al source cri­ti­cism ne­ces­sit­ates ac­cess to all the doc­u­ments.

(Arts. 11 and 12 ArchA)

¹ Archive re­cords that are clas­si­fied ac­cord­ing to the names of people and which con­tain sens­it­ive per­son­al data shall be covered by the 50‑year ex­ten­ded re­ten­tion peri­od in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 11 of the Act. In an in­di­vidu­al case, this may be re­duced in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 11 and 13 of the Act or ex­ten­ded in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 12 para­graph 2 of the Act.⁶

² If there is an over­rid­ing and le­git­im­ate pub­lic or private in­terest in pre­vent­ing the con­sulta­tion by third parties, the due re­ten­tion peri­od as per Art. 9 of the Act may be ex­ten­ded for cer­tain cat­egor­ies of archive re­cords or in an in­di­vidu­al case. The ex­ten­ded re­ten­tion peri­od for cat­egor­ies of archive re­cords shall as a rule total 50 years.

³ An over­rid­ing and le­git­im­ate pub­lic in­terest in pre­vent­ing con­sulta­tion shall ex­ist if ac­cess to the re­cords is likely:

a.

to jeop­ard­ise the in­tern­al or ex­tern­al se­cur­ity of the Con­fed­er­a­tion;

b.

to last­ingly af­fect re­la­tions with for­eign coun­tries, in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions or between the Con­fed­er­a­tion and the can­tons;

c.

to ser­i­ously af­fect the power of ac­tion of the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

⁴ An over­rid­ing and le­git­im­ate private in­terest in pre­vent­ing con­sulta­tion may ex­ist in par­tic­u­lar if con­sulta­tion of the re­cords would lead to a pre­ma­ture dis­clos­ure of pro­fes­sion­al or man­u­fac­tur­ing secrets.

⁵ Re­cord groups with spe­cial re­ten­tion peri­ods in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 12 para­graph 1 of the Act are lis­ted in An­nex 3. The Fed­er­al De­part­ment of Home Af­fairs may amend or sup­ple­ment this list. The most re­cent list in each case shall be held at the Fed­er­al Archives and shall be pub­licly ac­cess­ible. The up­dated ap­pendix shall be pub­lished in the Of­fi­cial Re­cord each year.

(Arts. 9, 11, 12 and 13 ArchA)

¹ Con­sulta­tion of the archive re­cords may be ap­plied for verbally or in writ­ing.

² Con­sulta­tion ap­plic­a­tions dur­ing the re­ten­tion peri­od must be jus­ti­fied in writ­ing.

³ Ap­plic­a­tions to con­sult doc­u­ments still covered by the re­ten­tion peri­od must prove, where ap­plic­able, that they were already in the pub­lic do­main, un­less pub­lic ac­cess is sub­ject to stat­utory con­trol.

(Art. 11 ArchA)

¹ When con­sulta­tion is ap­plied for dur­ing the ex­ten­ded re­ten­tion peri­od un­der Art­icle 11 of the Act, it shall be suf­fi­cient to prove that:

a.

the per­son con­cerned has giv­en his or her con­sent;

b.

the per­son con­cerned has been dead for at least three years.

² If the search does not re­late to per­sons, a writ­ten de­clar­a­tion by the ap­plic­ant to this ef­fect shall suf­fice.

In terms of the Act and of this Or­din­ance, the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity shall have power to rule on ac­cess to all doc­u­ments writ­ten or re­ceived by it.

(Arts. 9, 11, 12 and 13 ArchA)

¹ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity shall per­mit con­sulta­tion dur­ing the re­ten­tion peri­od if the rel­ev­ant doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to per­sons or facts were already in the pub­lic do­main be­fore ex­piry of the re­ten­tion peri­od, un­less new le­git­im­ate pub­lic or private in­terests emerge against such con­sulta­tion.

² The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity shall al­low con­sulta­tion dur­ing the ex­ten­ded re­ten­tion peri­od un­der Art­icle 11 para­graphs 1 and 2 of the Act if the con­di­tions of Art­icle 16 para­graph 1 are met.

³ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity may al­low con­sulta­tion dur­ing the re­ten­tion peri­od at the re­quest of the Fed­er­al Archives if:

a.⁷

there are no stat­utory pro­vi­sions that pre­vent it; and

b.

there are no over­rid­ing and le­git­im­ate op­pos­ing pub­lic or private in­terests; or

c.

the re­search does not re­late to spe­cif­ic per­sons in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 11 para­graph 3 of the Act.

⁴ The pub­lic activ­ity of per­sons from con­tem­por­ary his­tory may not be pro­tec­ted by the ar­gu­ment of over­rid­ing private in­terest.

(Art. 13 paras. 2 and 3 ArchA)

¹ The rul­ing au­thor­ity may make its au­thor­isa­tion to con­sult dur­ing the re­ten­tion peri­ods sub­ject to re­quire­ments and con­di­tions. It may in par­tic­u­lar re­quire that cer­tain parts of the file are not as­sessed, or that data be rendered an­onym­ous.

² The Fed­er­al Archives may re­quire a writ­ten de­clar­a­tion from the per­son con­sult­ing the file that he or she is aware of the re­quire­ments and con­di­tions.

³ In spe­cial cases the au­thor­ity may re­quire the text to be sub­mit­ted to it be­fore pub­lic­a­tion.

(Art. 15 paras. 1 and 2 ArchA)

¹ Any­one may re­quest in­form­a­tion about data con­cern­ing him or her that is archived at the Fed­er­al Archives or the in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing bod­ies.

² Be­fore is­su­ing the in­form­a­tion, the com­pet­ent body shall check the ap­plic­ant's iden­tity and de­cide wheth­er his or her re­quest is le­git­im­ate.

³ Such a re­quest for in­form­a­tion is not ad­miss­ible if the data is no longer clas­si­fied un­der the name of the per­son con­cerned or if the re­lease of the in­form­a­tion is not com­pat­ible with ef­fi­cient ad­min­is­tra­tion.

⁴ The right to in­form­a­tion shall fur­ther be gov­erned by the data pro­tec­tion le­gis­la­tion.

(Art. 15 para. 3 ArchA)

¹ If a con­cerned per­son be­comes aware that archived doc­u­ments con­tain in­form­a­tion about him or her which he or she con­siders in­cor­rect, he or she may have this noted but may not cor­rect the data.

² The note of ob­jec­tion must be sub­mit­ted in writ­ing to the body where the con­sulta­tion of the doc­u­ments took place. It must be marked as an ob­jec­tion with the place, date and sig­na­ture of the per­son con­cerned.

³ The note of ob­jec­tion shall be ad­ded to the doc­u­ments at the ap­pro­pri­ate point.

(Art. 9 paras. 1, 11, 13 para. 1 and Art. 15 ArchA)

¹ An ap­plic­ant must be gran­ted a hear­ing be­fore any de­cision to re­ject or only par­tially ac­cept and ap­plic­a­tion. An ap­peal­able rul­ing shall be is­sued on re­quest.

² The pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by the pro­vi­sions of the Ad­min­is­trat­ive Pro­ced­ure Act of 20 Decem­ber 1968⁸. The pro­ced­ure un­der Art­icle 15 para­graph 1 of the Act is re­served.

(Art. 19 ArchA)

The Fed­er­al Archives may use archive re­cords for com­mer­cial pur­poses if this does not im­pede the sov­er­eign busi­ness of state, if third parties are not thereby wrong­fully dis­ad­vant­aged in their busi­ness activ­it­ies and if the com­mer­cial use is not op­posed by copy­right.

(Art. 19 ArchA)

¹ The Fed­er­al Archives may grant au­thor­isa­tion as­sign­ing rights to com­mer­cial use of archive re­cords to third parties. The basis of such au­thor­isa­tion shall be a writ­ten ap­plic­a­tion to the Fed­er­al Archives.

² Such au­thor­isa­tion may be gran­ted if:

a.

an agree­ment has been reached on the scope of such use and the level of com­pens­a­tion;

b.

no op­pos­ing rights are af­fected; and

c.

oth­er users rights of use are not re­stric­ted.

³ If the rights of use are as­signed to non-profit-mak­ing in­sti­tu­tions or per­sons, the Fed­er­al Archives may waive the right to com­pens­a­tion.

⁴ Au­thor­isa­tion may be made con­di­tion­al on re­quire­ments and con­di­tions.

⁵ The con­sent of the Fed­er­al Archives is re­quired for the com­mer­cial use of archive re­cords of in­de­pend­ent archiv­ing bod­ies.

⁶ The pro­ced­ure is gov­erned by the pro­vi­sions of the Ad­min­is­trat­ive Pro­ced­ure Act of 20 Decem­ber 1968⁹.

(The Act. Art. 20 ArchA)

The own­er­ship of archive re­cords may not be trans­ferred un­less the archives are avail­able in two or more identic­al cop­ies and the cop­ies are no longer needed.

¹ The Fed­er­al Archives Reg­u­la­tions of 15 Ju­ly 1966¹⁰ shall be re­pealed.

² …¹¹

...¹²

This Or­din­ance comes in­to force on 1 Oc­to­ber 1999.