19th Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum – Enhancing cooperation of Parliaments, Best practices
István Simicskó former Hungarian Minister of Defence briefly presented Hungarian achievements in the fields discussed, the Hungarian legislation adopted in this context and the institutional structures. He stressed that cross-border security threats can only be effectively tackled through international cooperation. A good example of this is the cooperation between the Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) within the Egmont Group, which carry out analytical and evaluation activities on suspicious financial transactions. The Hungarian Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), which is part of the National Tax and Customs Administration, has been actively involved in developing the Customs and Financial Intelligence Unit Cooperation Manual, a joint project of the World Customs Organisation and the Egmont Group. The manual serves as a guide for customs, FIUs and law enforcement authorities to cooperate more effectively in the areas of financial crime, money laundering and terrorist financing. Based on the 2017 national risk assessment on the risks identified in the area of money laundering and terrorist financing in Hungary and addressing and mitigating them, the number of money laundering offences through commodity trafficking in Hungary is low, with a risk rating of 1.8 (moderately significant) on a scale of 1 to 4 in the national risk assessment.
Governments use their own state resources to protect themselves against adversarial foreign investment. In Hungary, the purchase of a controlling stake and the pursuit of certain activities are investigated, authorised or prohibited by the licensing and supervisory authorities (e.g. the Hungarian Competition Authority, the Hungarian National Bank, the Hungarian Energy and Utilities Regulatory Office). The Hungarian authorities have been detected several adversarial foreign investment efforts in the last decade and a half, affecting key players in strategic sectors. The Constitution Protection Office has recently detected hostile foreign investment efforts by several smaller players in the credit institutions sector.
The Hungarian government considers digitalisation and 5G as a priority strategic area, as 5G is not only a telecommunication policy issue, but also an economic strategy issue. 5G is one of the most influential technological innovations of our time, radically expanding the capabilities of telecommunication services and fostering the emergence of radically new, innovative and sometimes disruptive services and business models in a wide range of sectors, including automotive, transport, manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, energy industry, retail, entertainment and media. But the deployment of 5G also poses significant national security risks. In this context, we will monitor the activities of foreign telecommunication service providers and tech companies (in particular) to ensure that the Hungarian public sector involved in the 5G network roll-out is free from outside influence. Hungary’s AI Strategy for 2020-2030 prioritises the introduction of control systems for law enforcement. In the field of cyber defence, he mentioned the law, which established the Hungarian cyber defence organisational system. The National Cyber
Coordination Council and the Cyber Security Forum, established to channel private sector expertise into government decision-making, are strategic elements of this system. As a result of the 2015 amendment to the law, the National Security Special Service (NSS) was designated to perform operational tasks with regard to the information systems of state and local government organisations, and the National Cyber Defence Institute (NKI) was established within its structures on 1 October 2015.
In order to improve cooperation between parliaments, he has proposed the creation of a database of legislation and best practices on the issues on the agenda, which could help other countries to draft legislation in these fields.
