SIPA, the Border Police and the Directorate for the Coordination of Police Bodies are facing a huge staff deficit, which could seriously jeopardize the work of these state agencies.
An attempt is being made to solve this problem by temporarily amending the Law on Police Officers of BiH, which would extend the working life of hundreds of them. While some warn of a possible collapse, others claim that the law poses a risk to the system and is being used as a mechanism to retain privileged individuals.
Hundreds of police officers are retiring
The drastic reduction in staff is accelerating and dangerous for the country’s security system. Hundreds of police officers are retiring this year alone. The proposed law provides for an extension of the working life for officers who have reached 40 years of retirement, but not 65 years of age.
Albin Muslić, SDP representative in the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliament, points out: “We could potentially have a serious problem in the coming period in staffing the BiH police agencies, which calls into question the work of both the Border Police and SIPA, the agency for the coordination of police bodies and all their mandatory activities that they carry out every day.”
The most critical situation in the Border Police
This undercapacity in personnel is most alarming in the BiH Border Police, which lacks 1,323 police officers – half of the required number, while 280 employees are eligible for retirement this year.
With the regular recruitment of new officers, almost the same number are retiring. From 2025 to 2027, based on the exercise of the right to retirement, the employment of more than 600 police officers will cease. The proposal envisages that the amended provisions will be applied in terms of personnel structure, up to a maximum of 80% for police officers from the rank of police officer to the rank of senior inspector, and up to 20% for categories of police officers with the ranks of independent and chief inspector. It is not clear how and on the basis of which indicators such a provision can be applied without discriminating against individual police officers.
Controversies surrounding the proposed amendments to the law
Therefore, progress for managers, the impossibility of the same for lower-ranking officers, favoritism, additional politicization, as well as an attempt to improve work performance by solving the personnel deficit by extending the working life of pensioners, make the amendments unacceptable to unions, which are seeking a systemic solution.
This proposed law gives too much freedom to decide which of the employees can extend their employment within the police body and leaves the possibility of unequal treatment of police officers and favoritism of individuals, which is in no way in line with the principles of legality, accountability, fairness, legal certainty and institutional sustainability to which the proposer refers in his proposal. The risk of politicization of parts of the police system thus becomes much greater.
“The problem is that the entire hierarchy and subordination are disrupted because, in fact, the main leaders of police institutions at the level of BiH would extend their mandate by three to four years. On the other hand, it is not the same when you extend a police officer who works 400 kilometers at a border crossing to work until the age of 59 for the same, miserable salary, and a manager who earns a few thousand and sits in an office, adds Sandi Dizdarević, a security expert.
Therefore, it is urgently needed, and without the support of the EU Delegation to BiH. Instead of a long-term solution to the shortage of personnel, politics offers an ad-hoc solution that, experts claim, will deepen political control of the police leadership, which includes control over investigations, personnel and the moment of justice.
The examples of the cases of Darko Ćulum and Zoran Galić best show how great this influence is and why state police agencies are not only security institutions, but also tools of political power.
