Minister of Interior Sándor Pintér gave an interview to national television MTV’s ‘Az Este’ show on Tuesday, 18 September stating that order in the country is significantly better than it was in 2010. Now the public is aware of the severity of punishment following certain crimes – he added.

The Minister reminded that two years ago they established order in Hungary by introducing legal changes, such as for instance punishing offences by confinement. 

In connection with the restructuring of police forces Minister Pintér stated that objective figures and index-numbers, based on which police leaders and units could be measured, were agreed upon when he was appointed to office as Minister of Interior. He added: after a period of grace, the heads of offices had to ‘produce these figures’. During the evaluation process, decisions were based on 23 types of crimes and certain principles, such as the number of crimes committed, data compared to the previous year and the number of robbery and burglary crimes solved. The Minister remarked: those who left did not make the statistics any better; on the contrary they made it worse. That is why other people were asked to take up their positions. He also drew the attention to the fact that the police leaders in question were not made redundant but reassigned to other positions.

Regarding the assumption that underworld people took down police leaders with themselves Minister Pintér said: the employees of National Defense Service collected data and as soon as they gathered enough information on corruption, they handed the case over to the Head Prosecution Service.

Concerning the abolition of early retirement the Minister said: the number of those who asked to be reinstated in service is between 70 and 100 people. This number, as Minister Pintér remarked, is neither high nor low. He also mentioned that there are 7 people who expressed the wish to leave the police forces following their reassignment to other positions. The Minister of Interior said: since his introduction to office 4200 policemen have started their training and following the training the number of the police has increased by 3500.

Talking about the success of public employment he said: currently there are approximately 210 thousand public employees but the number of applicants is higher than of those who can be employed.

(Ministry of Interior)