Day 2 – Opening keynote
Marens Engelhard is the National Archivist of the Netherlands 
and director of the Dutch National Archives in The Hague. He advises the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science on all aspects of archival policy. He also guards the unity in the policy towards appraisal of government archives within the Netherlands. In that role he is involved in the process of devising retention schedules.
Trained as a historian, Marens worked first some ten years as a consultant in the private sector. He started his career in the public service in 1995 at the Ministry of Economic affairs. In 1998 he continued his career at the Amsterdam municipality. First as management consultant and interim manager, later as a.o. director of the Pedological Institute Amsterdam (Pedologisch Instituut Amsterdam) and district secretary of one of the major city districts of Amsterdam. In 2010 he became the director of the Amsterdam City Archives.
“The right to information has to be conquered everyday… Archives have always been instruments of power and countervailing power…Open access to information is not a matter of technology but of culture, attitude and mentality…If the right to be forgotten should ever be implemented there may be little left to research….”