The closing ceremony of the EU funded Twinning project “Capacity building of the Ministry of Security through the establishment of the National the Security Authority” took place on February 11th 2010 in Hotel “Holiday Inn” in Sarajevo.
Speaking at the ceremony, Imre Iváncsik, Deputy Minister in charge of National Security services of Hungary, said that his country’s role in this project was to pass the knowledge and experience that Hungary acquired regarding protection of confidential data, especially when it comes to the enforcement of the rules of the EU and NATO. “It started almost from scratch, but, so far, your institutions have developed their capacity to manage and protect confidential data of the EU in accordance with relevant regulations of the EU,” added Mr. Iváncsik.
The European Union provided 1,5 million EUR for this 29-months long project which was implemented in co-operation with the National Security Authority of the Republic of Hungary and the BiH Ministry of Security. Other beneficiary institutions of the project are the BiH Ministry of Defence, BiH Ministry of Foreign Affairs (including BiH Mission to the EU in Brussels), OSA, SIPA and BiH Border Police. The activities of the project have been conducted within three components: harmonization of BiH legislation on secret data protection with the EU standards, training of BiH personnel handling the secret data including specialized trainings regarding personal, physical, document security , INFOSEC and industrial security and supply and installation of an EU-conform security infrastructure on the state level for safeguarding and secure transmission of secret data. BiH institutions which took part in the project are now capable of ensuring protection of the EU secret data in accordance with the relevant EU security regulations.
Mijo Kresic, BiH Deputy Minister of Security , pointed out to another value of this project – through the cooperation of legal experts, draft amendments to the Law on Protection of Classified Information was made, which is currently in the procedure, and which would fully harmonize this domain with the EU standards.
Thanking everyone who took part in and provided support for this project, Maria Farrar-Hockley, Head of Operations section for Justice and Home Affairs at the Delegation of the European Union to BiH, stated that once the Law on Classified Information is adopted, she’ll be able to say that the Twinning project “Strengthening the capacity of the Ministry of Security through establishment of the state security organs” was successful.
