Former politician and prominent Sarajevo professor, Zlatko Lagumdzija, criticized the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) for not including the state in importanteconomic processes in the region, stating that “all trains go without BiH”.
“I don’t know what else can be expected from the people who lead us, without it being a further path to endless decline. Only in the last 24 hours, BiH has experienced a complete collapse and lack of state behavior and foreign policy without any vision and elementary leadership, ” he told.
The “Little Schengen” initiative is progressing without BiH
Namely, the leaders of Serbia, North Macedonia, and Albania met in Skopje to discuss the “Little Schengen” idea, and after a successful meeting, they announced “the beginning of a new era of cooperation in the region”, but BiH is not included in those processes.
“Rama, Zaev, and Vucic have announced that all international, legal, and technical expert agreements between these three countries are underway, which will ‘erase’ all mutual borders for the free flow of people, goods, capital, and services by the end of next year. Almost the entire past year, two members of the BiH Presidency were against the ‘Little Schengen.’ Suddenly, at the invitation of several important foreigners, on September 17th, 2020, the Presidency decided to ‘welcome the initiative or process which was already underway between Serbia, NorthMacedonia, and Albania and instruct the Council of Ministers to make an analysis of what that means for BiH, what are the damages, benefits, and possible dangers within 30 days, ” he noted.
Almost a year has passed since that decision, and there are no visible indications that anything has been done regarding that issue.
“We have neither heard nor seen that anything has been done on this issue to find out today that all these trains are going without BiH,” Lagumdzija pointed out.
He told that members of the Presidency are required by “elementary decency and respect for institutions and citizens” to urgently comment on the next steps when it comes to regional cooperation and that they do something concrete on this topic.
“It is time to stop the continuation of this behavior of the people who lead us. Otherwise, the perspective of BiH, and especially parts of the Federation, is to become the West Coast and Gaza of Europe, which would become a dark province that is surrounded by the European Union (EU) and Little Schengen. It is time for the people who run this country to start to take care of it, and not to start quarrels that only serve their survival in power, ” concluded Lagumdzija.
At the very beginning of the creation of the idea of Little Schengen, while in BiH they still opposed it, Lagumdzija warned that it is a process that we must join. He mentioned that this is something that will happen anyway, but that it would be best for BiH to be involved in the elaboration of that idea from the very beginning.
Besides the non-state behavior in terms of regional cooperation, he also mentioned the fact that on Wednesday night, the EU, ie Croatia, united its territory across the Neum Bay, despite the fact that “false patriots and statesmen have been constantly claiming during past years that they were trying to prevent it”, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
