Hungarian Police Units to Serbia and North Macedonia

New Hungarian police contingents left for northern Macedonia and Serbia on Tuesday to assist border police operations, the state news agency MTI reports.

The communication service of the Hungarian Police Headquarters (ORFK) announced in a statement on police.hu that the Hungarian police is committed to preventing illegal migrants from entering Hungary and the European Union. To this end, it has offered its support to the Western Balkan countries.

It said that the members of the 49th Hungarian police contingent to Serbia and the 61st Hungarian police contingent to Northern Macedonia were seen off on Tuesday at the central facility of the Hungarian Border Police (ORFK) in Budapest by Gergely Czukor, head of the ORFK's Border Police Department.

The Hungarian policemen serving in the 30-member Northern Macedonian and 20-member Serbian contingents perform their duties with their own equipment and exercise their authority to take action under the direction and supervision of the host country's law enforcement agency.

The main tasks of the Hungarian police officers are patrol duties to prevent and detect illegal border crossings and to assist in the apprehension of people smugglers and illegal migrants. Hungarian police officers are not only deployed in the immediate vicinity of the border, but also inside the country.

The contingents support the protection of the border section with off-road service vehicles, night vision equipment, hand-held thermal imaging cameras and mobile thermal imaging cameras.
In its statement, the ORFK also pointed out that the members of the contingents returning from Northern Macedonia and Serbia are subject to the same epidemiological rules as Hungarian citizens.