Founding history
The foundation of the Archives followed a Resolution of the Constitutional Court of Hungary. In 1994, the Constitutional Court was examining the constitutionality of the law that had ordered the lustration of people in important public positions. They stated that the Parliament acted against the Constitution by not providing for people’s informational self-determination when they ordered their lustration. At the same time the Parliament was obligated to put an end to this anti-constitutional situation by legislating people’s right to become acquainted with all the personal data gathered and kept by State Security Organizations. Modifying the Law of Screening in 1997, the Parliament set up the Historical Office, which was an archive despite its name. In 2003, as a by-product of the scandal following the publicity of the State Security past of the then Prime Minister, the Parliament founded the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (hereafter: Historical Archives or ÁBTL) by a new Act.
The Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL, Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára) was founded as the legal successor of the Hungarian Historical Office in accordance with Act III. of 2003 on the Disclosure of the Secret Service Activities of the Communist Regime and on the Establishment of the Historical Archive of the Hungarian State Security and designated as a special national archive by Act LXVI of 1995 of Public Records, Public Archives, and the Protection of Private Archives. In legal terms, the Historical Archives is publicly financed an independent institute and budget denomination. Work at the Archives is supervised by the Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament.
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