If things go on as before, then we can expect the names of plenty of former agents to be leaked in coming weeks. By now we know: whenever the question of former informers and agents comes into public view, new information is unearthed and given to the press. When the current Agents' Law was being discussed, for example, the economics professor Tamás Bácskai was unmasked in the daily Magyar Nemzet. Then, as if in response, documents supposedly written by Károly Szita, the Fidesz mayor of Kaposvár, were revealed to the public. (Szita continues to deny the allegations, unlike Bácskai).

It was precisely in order to put and end to the practice of 'drip-drop revelations' that the governing coalition passed the modified agents' law. The law establishes a Historical Archive of the Security Services, whose job it will be to place certain categories of newly declassified documents on its website.

But it was no surprise when Ferenc Mádl referred the new law to the Constitutional Court, in one of the last acts of his presidency, saying that he saw in it 'grounds for concern'. And the Court agrees with Mádl: there is no constitutional mechanism for making personal data about an individual publicly available, the Court argues.