The role of the COMPASS tokamak in research of generation, confinement and losses of runaway electron (RE) population is presented. Recently, two major groups of experiments aimed at improved understanding and control of the REs have been pursued. First, the effects of the massive gas injection ( Ar/Ne particles) and impurity seeding ( particles) were studied systematically. The observed phenomena include generation of the post-disruption RE beam and current conversion from plasma to RE. Zero loop voltage control was implemented in order to study the decay in simplified conditions. A distinctive drop of background plasma temperature and electron density was observed following an additional deuterium injection into the RE beam. With the loop voltage control the parametric dependence of the current decay rate dI/dt can be studied systematically and possibly extrapolated to larger facilities. Second, recent results of experiments focused on the role of the magnetic field in physics of RE were analysed. In this contribution, special attention is given to the observed effects of the resonant magnetic perturbation on the RE population. The benefits of the RE experiments on COMPASS was reinforced by diagnostic enhancements (fast cameras, Cherenkov detector, vertical ECE etc) and modelling efforts (in particular, coupling of the METIS and LUKE codes).