A joint meeting of the National Coordination Mechanism and NGO Roundtable of the Ministry of the Interior took place on 2 December.
Due to the pandemic, the two formations held their meetings online on 2 December. In the first half of the meeting, the National Anti-Trafficking Coordinator and Deputy State Secretary Mátyás Hegyaljai presented the most important developments of recent months.
In his report he briefed participants about the U.S. TIP Report, which kept Hungary in the Tier 2 ranking, and informed the members of the two forums about the upcoming online meeting with the U.S. Department of State's TIP Office and several ministries and government agencies in early December to evaluate the implementation of their recommendations.
Nóra Jakubovich, head of the Unit for Counter Trafficking and Horizontal Issues, reported on the preparation of the 2022-2023 Action Plan for the National Anti-Trafficking Strategy for 2020-2023; the action plan is expected to enter into force in February 2022.
In addition to the above, the Ministry of the Interior has launched an anti-trafficking newsletter, is preparing a physical issue of study on the individual needs of male victims of labor exploitation, and a thematic issue on trafficking of the Belügyi Szemle (Home Affairs Review) is scheduled to be published in February 2022.
Despite the epidemic, training activities of the Ministry of the Interior continued. By June 2021, the attitude-forming training series, organized jointly with the National Police Headquarters, the General Prosecutor's Office and the National Institute of Criminology, covered all 19 counties and the capital of the country; furthermore, the training of preparing consuls in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is ongoing.
Following the report by the Ministry of the Interior, the members of the Coordination Mechanism and the NGO Round Table provided updates on the projects they had implemented and the results achieved since the previous meeting.