26 3. Cooperation between the NPM and civil society organizations ment of the right to defense, and the monitoring of the penal system’s suicide prevention activities. The representative of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee informed the participants that two years before they had started a research project covering seven countries, whose main objective was to find an explanation as to why there were differences in the quality of official inquiries into cases of abuse committed by persons in their official capacity (to what extent those inquiries are suitable for preventing abuse and finding the perpetrator). The Hungarian Helsinki Committee is looking for specific legal or practical solutions that could be of significance from this aspect. In the experimental phase of the research, launched in 2015, the analysis of the legal systems of Hungary and the United Kingdom, and the necessary research background materials were completed. The other participants of the project are Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Northern Ireland and France. With the help of a preliminary questionnaire and a hypothetical case, the experts of the participating countries had prepared their case studies, based on which the Hungarian Helsinki Committee compiled a 140-page comparative study presenting the project’s methodology and results. The presentation of the comparative study and the discussion thereof by colleagues participating in the project and invited external experts, including the representative of the SPT, was scheduled to be held in Budapest, on February 24, 2017. The representative of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee suggested that the NPM should visit the transit zones near Röszke and Tompa. The representative of the MDAC made a short presentation of a project financed by the European Union, conducted with the participation of the Czech Republic, Hungary, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria. The project’s participants conducted monitoring visits to the homes of mentally handicapped children, organized and held interdisciplinary training programs for legal, social and healthcare professionals, and developed methodologies in connection with the visits and training programs. The training programs and the methodologies are aimed at preparing professionals participating in the visits. Within the framework of the project, in Hungary, they visited five, mainly church-administered institutions. Unfortunately, the staffers of the MDAC faced some serious difficulties when trying to have access to certain state-run institutions. Although the head of the institution in Bóly showed readiness to cooperate, the General Directorate of Social Affairs and Child Protection did not give its consent to the visit by the MDAC. On the day just before the meeting of the CCB, the visit to the TOPhÁZ Special Home in Felsõgöd (where the number of inhabitants is above two hundred) fell through because, previous arrangements notwithstanding, a high-ranking representative of the operator refused to let the visiting delegation in the institution. According to the information at the MDAC’s disposal, an internal inspection