On Wednesday (April 22, 2015) in the building of the Hungarian parliament in Budapest, Földváryné Réka Kiss, the head of the Hungarian Committee of National Remembrance (Nemzeti Emlékezet Bizottságának – NEB) and Łukasz Kamiński, president of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of education, historical research and archival documentation. On the same day, at the National University of Public Service in Budapest both presidents gave a lecture to its students and faculty professors on the memory of totalitarianism in the twentieth century.
Deputy Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament Gergely Gulyás in his speech stressed the role of IPN as the most important authority and source of knowledge about the history of Communism. IPN was also praised by the president of NEB Réka Földváryné Kiss. She said the Institute in the most important center reappraising the period of dictatorship in Central and Eastern Europe.
The agreement entails promoting joint projects, translating and issuing publications of both entities, exchanging experts and employees, organizing exhibitions, scientific and educational projects aimed at popularising historical and cultural heritage of both countries and exchanging archival documentation.
Hungarian NEB is a scientific institution. It is to create academic and research programs for a thorough examination of the mechanisms and structures of power in the period of the Communist dictatorship. The Committee's task is to collect and analyze data, generate reports on the structures of power and those in leadership of the Communist party and state apparatus. In addition to research activities, the Committee will also have an educational role e.g. it will publishing its findings on the Internet.
On the basis of gathered information the Committee has the right to set off a criminal procedure in the Attorney General's Office. It will cooperate with the department of the Prosecutor's Office which is responsible for prosecuting crimes of the past.
Independently of the Committee, there function the Hungary Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security, which play a similar role as the IPN's Office for Preservation and Dissemination of Archival Records.
Members of the Committee are appointed for a 9-year term. Three are chosen by the Parliament, one by the president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and another one by the Minister of Administration and Justice. NEB has started its work at the beginning of 2014. Interestingly, there is an age limit for the members of the Committee - none of them could be born before February 14, 1972, which guarantees that at the time of reorganization of the Communist security services, none of them was more than 18 years old.
NEB delegation with its president Reka Földváryné Kiss visited Warsaw in October last year, when main items of the agreement were established.