316 secret documents from the Suceava county archive are declassified, some after 77 years

An aerial photomap of the village of Lisaura, made in 1980, was a State secret for 46 years. From 30 September 2026 it is a sheet of archive paper that anyone may ask for. Government Decision no. 778/2026 declassifies the information contained in 316 documents issued between 1949 and 2002, held in the archive holdings and in the keeping of Suceava County Council. The act has three articles and an annex that fills almost all of the 23 pages it occupies in the Official Gazette of Romania, and the whole point lies in the annex: the complete list, entry by entry, of what is being opened up.

The legal basis is Article 108 of the Constitution and Article 24(4) and (10) of Law no. 182/2002 on the protection of classified information. Paragraph (4) states that information classified as a State secret may be declassified by government decision, at the reasoned request of the issuing body. Paragraph (10) states that declassification is carried out by the persons or authorities competent to approve classification. The three levels of secrecy for State secrets are defined in Article 15(f) of the same law: top secret of special importance, top secret and secret, in descending order of the gravity of the damage that disclosure would cause.

Article 1 approves the declassification and states the substantive condition: disclosure of the information „nu mai poate prejudicia securitatea națională, apărarea țării, ordinea publică ori interesele persoanelor de drept public sau privat deținătoare”, can no longer harm national security, the defence of the country, public order or the interests of the public or private persons holding it. The physical operation is described in Article 2: on the declassified documents the date of declassification and the words „NECLASIFICAT” are to be entered, above or below the old inscription, which is to be cancelled by drawing an oblique stroke through it. Under Article 3(1), the documents stay in the keeping of Suceava County Council, under National Archives Law no. 16/1996, and paragraph (2) refers, for consultation, to Article 28(1) and Article 30 of that same law and to Article 12 of Law no. 544/2001.

The annex is the list of the classified information, with twelve columns for each entry: the serial number, the number given by the issuing body, the date, the issuing body, the short description, the number of copies, the number of sheets, the number of annexes and of their sheets, the level, the reason for declassification and remarks. The numbering runs from 1 to 316 without a single break and without a single repeated entry.

What the 316 documents actually contain. The greater part is cartography and town planning. 100 entries are urban layout plans, sketches or maps, almost all of them of the city of Suceava, but also of the towns of Fălticeni, Rădăuți, Gura Humorului, Siret and Solca. 73 entries are aerial photomaps, flown in 1980 (42 of them), in 1968 (23) and in 1967 (7), covering areas named in the annex one by one: Lisaura, Sfântul Ilie, Șcheia, Ițcani, Prelipca, Salcea, Plopeni, Bosanci, Tișăuți. Another 59 entries are topographic surveys and plans, 11 are inventories, 6 contain inventories of coordinates and 5 concern triangulation points. By medium, 125 entries are diazo prints, 39 are drawings on tracing paper, 16 are plates on film and 48 are files.

The 13 documents classified „strict secret”, that is at the level immediately above, say the most about what the administration was afraid of. Five are from 1972 and all of them concern the city of Suceava: entries 155, 162, 172 and 192, sketches, a map and an urban layout plan, plus entry 193, with proposals for water and sewerage works. Another four are the topographic plan of the town of Fălticeni, of 28 November 1952, the urban layout of the same town, of 31 August 1954, the urban layout sketch of the city of Suceava, of 16 July 1967, and the topographic surveys in the Gemenea area, of 29 April 1984. Two are internal documents of a commercial company, the framework structure of the programme for preventing leaks of classified information of S.C. Proiect Bucovina S.A. Suceava, of 20 April 2000, and the supplement to it of 20 June 2001.

The other two fall right outside the cartographic series. Entry 71 is a „Tabel nominal 1950-1958 Regionala partid regiunea Suceava”, a nominal roll of the Suceava regional party organisation, a file of 43 sheets, top secret. Entry 72, dated 2 November 1957, is called „Lucrări de M.L. pe anul 1958 secțiunea agricolă, regiunea Suceava” and has 277 sheets, which makes it the bulkiest document in the whole annex. They are the only two entries that contain no maps, plans, inventories or calculations, and the only ones in which, judging by the description, the names of people appear.

There are four issuing bodies. The People’s Council of Suceava County appears at 187 entries, plus one where the name is truncated, the People’s Council of the Suceava Region at 117, S.C. Proiect Bucovina S.A. Suceava at 9, and Suceava County Council itself at 2, both dated 13 September 1993. Neither of the two majority issuers still exists: the regional people’s councils disappeared with the administrative reform of 1968, and the county people’s councils were abolished in the early 1990s.

What it changes in practice

The first effect is that, from 30 September 2026, the 316 documents can no longer be refused on grounds of classification. Article 12(1)(a) of Law no. 544/2001 takes out of free access information in the field of national defence, security and public order, but only „dacă fac parte din categoriile informațiilor clasificate, potrivit legii”, if it belongs to the categories of classified information under the law. Once declassified, the documents lose that quality, so the ground for refusal disappears. That is the real opening the act produces, and that is why the decision concerns everyone, not only the institution keeping the files.

The second effect is that access becomes possible without becoming automatic. The decision refers expressly to Article 30 of Law no. 16/1996, which states that documents are not released for research where their consultation may affect national interests or the rights and freedoms of citizens, nor those in a poor state of preservation or not yet processed archivally. For 125 diazo prints and 39 drawings on tracing paper, media that deteriorate, the preservation filter is not theoretical: the condition is established by a specialist committee and recorded in a report. And Article 12(1)(d) of Law no. 544/2001 continues to protect personal data, which bears directly on entry 71, the nominal roll of 100 sheets.

The third effect is one of record-keeping. On each document an operation has to be performed, under Article 2: writing the date of declassification and the words „NECLASIFICAT”, plus cancelling the old inscription with an oblique stroke. There are 316 documents, in 342 copies, so the marking has to be applied 342 times. Until the operation is finished, a document requested at the counter still carries the old inscription, and the proof that it has been declassified lies in the Official Gazette of Romania, not on the paper itself.

The fourth effect concerns the 30-year term. Article 28(2) of Law no. 16/1996 allows documents in the National Archive Holdings to be consulted on request, by Romanian and foreign citizens, 30 years after they were created, while for more recent ones research may be carried out only with the approval of the management of the creating or holding body. 312 of the 316 entries were issued in 1996 or earlier, so that term has already passed. Four were not: entries 297 and 299, of 20 April and 21 September 2000, entry 298, of 20 June 2001, and entry 294, of 10 December 2002. They reach 30 years in 2030, 2030, 2031 and 2032 respectively.

The fifth effect is that ownership of the documents and responsibility for them do not move. Article 3(1) leaves everything with Suceava County Council, which becomes, in practice, both the recipient of requests and the body deciding what falls under the exceptions in Article 30. There is no transfer to the National Archives and no obligation to publish, to scan or to put anything online.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Until now these 316 documents were State secrets, and their regime was that of Law no. 182/2002: access only on the basis of a written authorisation, after security vetting, in designated premises and under designated conditions. A request for information of public interest about their content was rejected on the basis of Article 12(1)(a) of Law no. 544/2001, with no discussion about age or historical interest. The decision undoes exactly that, and nothing more.

What has not changed is the original classification. The markings „secret” and „strict secret” were put on the papers under the regime in force before 2002, some of them more than seven decades ago. The law that produced them no longer exists, the levels referred to in Article 15(f) of Law no. 182/2002 are today’s levels, and the match between the old inscription and the new level is explained nowhere in the act. The annex takes the inscription as it stands on the document, abbreviated as „S” at 303 entries and written out in full as „Strict secret” at 13.

The practical calendar of research has changed too. Before, the age of the document did not matter, because classification overrode any archive term. From now on the benchmark becomes the 30-year term in Law no. 16/1996, and it has already been met at 312 of the 316 entries. For the first 312, a refusal can no longer rest on age; for the other four, until 2030, 2031 and 2032, research remains conditional on the approval of the holder’s management.

One detail that shows how old the file is: the reason for declassification is, at all 316 entries, the same sentence. „Nu mai poate prejudicia siguranța națională, apărarea țării, ordinea publică ori interesul CJ Sv.”, it can no longer harm national security, the defence of the country, public order or the interest of Suceava County Council, repeated 315 times, with the same sentence at entry 1 but with the abbreviation written out. Two wordings for 316 documents, so no differentiation at all between an aerial photomap of a village and the nominal roll of a party organisation.

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