The development and beginnings of the Hungarian legal regulation of private security activities

Abstract

A democratic market economy is inconceivable without the primacy of private property, without privately owned companies. The security and protection of private property and, in many cases, state property cannot be imagined without the existence of the private security sector. In Hungary, the change of regime in 1990 brought with it the market-based liberalization of the security sector, but in the following 8 years the sector was typically a “playground” of underworld interests without legal regulation. The law, passed in 1998, was outdated, worrying professionally and legally, and placed the legal regulations of a sector employing nearly 200,000 active workers on a misguided, misinterpreted legislative trail to this day. As a result, the sector still has the highest number of black jobs and financial crime to date. The current legislation is diverse, over-regulated, contradictory and without legal consequences on many issues. The present study is the first, introductory part of my multi-part dissertation series