On 24 November 2023, a joint meeting of the National Coordination Mechanism against Trafficking in Human Beings and the NGO Roundtable was held at the Ministry of Interior. The meeting provided an excellent opportunity to review the most important professional events of the last period and to review the way forward.
The meeting was chaired by Dr. Mátyás Hegyaljai, Deputy State Secretary for the European Union and International Affairs, National Coordinator for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings. The Ministry of Interior presented the draft report of the Council of Europe's Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (GRETA), the main findings and the actions to be taken. In addition, we informed participants about the visit of the TIP Office of the US State Department, the outcome of the NREM meeting in Brussels in the second half of 2023 and the state of play of the ongoing revision of the EU anti-trafficking directive 2011/36/EU.
The Ministry of the Interior thanked the participants for the events and activities organised to mark the EU Anti-Trafficking Day (18 October), and the representative of the National Crime Prevention Council reported on the poster exhibition hosted by the Police Museum.
The meeting also included an overview of the professional programmes implemented, including the latest meeting of the Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County Coordination Mechanism and the research among Ukrainian refugees presented at the joint conference of the Chance for Families 2005 Foundation and the UNHCR. Another important milestone was the agreement on the anti-trafficking components of the Swiss-Hungarian cooperation programme.
In the context of the way forward, the finalisation of the National Anti-Trafficking Strategy for 2020-2023 and the development of a new four-year national strategy were also discussed. On the Ministry of Interior side, we stressed our openness to suggestions in the development of the strategy.
Detecting cases of labour exploitation remains a challenge. The participating bodies agreed that closer cooperation between the police, the prosecution and the labour inspectorate as well as the relevant NGOs, is important to put an end to this phenomenon.