80 Percent of Citizens living in Republika Srpska Entity are against BiH entry into NATO

As many as 79.7 percent of citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina living in Republika Srpska entity is against BiH’s entry into NATO, are the results of a public opinion poll on BiH’s Euro-Atlantic integration, which was presented by representatives of the Faculty of Political Sciences in Banja Luka.

FPN doctoral student Helena Krnetic said that 51.1 percent of respondents were convinced that only joining NATO integrations would endanger the survival of RS, Klix.ba writes.

“When it comes to the EU, citizens perceive it in a political and economic sense as a more stable whole, and at the same time it is a more attractive space. As many as 48.8 percent of respondents supported BiH’s entry into European integration,” Krnetic said.

She stated that the examination of the attitudes of RS citizens on BiH’s entry into European integration and NATO was conducted in three phases. “The first phase was completed in October 2019, the second in February, and the third in June this year, and in all three surveys we obtained fairly uniform results, ie the negative attitude of RS citizens towards joining NATO is evident,” she stressed.

FPN professor Zeljko Budimir said that the research could conclude that the citizens of RS are explicitly against BiH’s integration into NATO. He says that the citizens of RS believe that the integrations in the EU and NATO are separated, and added that this is very important because there is pressure, especially from outside, that this type of integration belongs to the unique concept of Euro-Atlantic integration.

Budimir added that the research shows that support for EU accession in all three phases of the research did not fall below 50 percent, while a negative trend was shown when it comes to BiH’s accession to NATO.