Cooperation with the Police Department
Cooperation with the Police Department
Two new legal institutions should be mentioned in relation to the cooperation with the police. These are over-the-border surveillance and pursuit, which are new legal institutions both in the actual Hungarian legislation and in Hungarian investigative practice. Investigative authorities will carry out the tasks of surveillance, over-the-border pursuit, and crime prevention.
A basic precondition for the above legal institution to function effectively is to build up an adequate intelligence system. The new system will, under Article 44 of the Regulation on the implementation of the Schengen Treaty, allow so-called ‘standby services’ to carry out information cooperation over the border.
In Article 125 of the Regulation on the implementation of the Schengen Treaty, contracting parties agree that their customs administrations will delegate liaison officers to one other. The goal of sending liaison officers is to promote and accelerate general cooperation between the contracting parties, with particular respect to the effective agreements on mutual assistance and to Community documents. Liaison officers will perform advisory and assistance tasks, they will have to take measure on their own initiative in customs administrative cases.
In order to appoint persons who are to act as customs liaison officers, the Customs and Finance Guard’s National Headquarters has invited a tender to the EUROPOL center situated in The Hague. The tender has been closed successfully, and the awarded bidder, once prepared to perform a liaison officer’s duties and all the other conditions for its delegation are met, can take the aforementioned position from 1 January 2001.
