In less than a year, the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) suspended two property laws in the Republika Srpska (RS). Can this put an end to political disputes that have lasted for 20 years?
Another attempt to pass the Law on Immovable Property in RS failed after the previous one was annulled by the High Representative in April of last year. The entity law, which was supposed to regulate the issue of property in the RS, was adopted in December, and overturned pending the final decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH, following an appeal by Bosniak member of the Presidency, Denis Becirovic. All this after the Constitutional Court of BiH previously declared property on the entire territory of BiH to be state property, which the official Banja Luka rejected.
“The order of April 12th, 2022 (which annulled the previous Law on Property) will apply to the Law on Immovable Property Used for the Functioning of Public Authorities, the application of which is suspended until the final decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH enters into force or until the Constitutional Court makes a decision on temporary measures in connection with the aforementioned law”, was the decision of the Office of the High Representative (OHR), made a few hours before the entry into force of the mentioned law in the RS.
Dodik: “Nothing happened”
The decision was made after an extraordinary session of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), in which the right of High Representative Christian Schmidt to further extend the order with the aim of stopping any further attempt to unilaterally regulate the issue of state property was retained.
“From a legal point of view, nothing happened. RS adopted the Law on Immovable Property, which remains in force. Decisions of illegally elected High Representatives are not published in the Official Gazette. Not every intending traveler can interfere in the internal affairs of BiH and RS,” said Dodik, commenting on Christian Schmidt’s decision to suspend the law on immovable property.
From military to state property
In the Law on Immovable Property, which was adopted by the National Assembly of the RS (NARS), all immovable property used by the authorities of the RS, local self-government units, public enterprises, public institutions, and all other services belong to this entity. It is also a perennial subject of dispute in BiH, more precisely since 2004 and the first attempt to divide the property. Then the PIC called on the local authorities to resolve this issue.
The OHR waited for a year, and since there was no agreement, the then High representative Paddy Ashdown imposed the Law on the Prohibition of Disposal of State Property in order to prevent it from being transferred to lower levels of government. The property that the former state had had to be distributed between all levels of government, so the army was divided into perspectives, which can be used, such as barracks, and non-prospective, which the state did not use and belonged to lower levels of government.
What does the entity law bring?
According to entity laws, it is possible to register about 400 objects from the official list of state property. All of this refers to objects that are subject to the Law on the Prohibition of Disposal of State Property of BiH, which was imposed in 2005 by the then High Representative, Paddy Ashdown.
Political analyst Tanja Topic recalled that the story about the property is old and that local politicians have never been able to come to an agreement.
“If we are talking about some kind of resolution, regardless of the objections of the OHR, the High Representative is still the supreme authority in the interpretation of the civilian part of the peace agreement. Failure to comply with his decisions, if there were any registration contrary to his decision, I think it will be treated as a criminal offense”, says Topic, emphasizing that at the moment the High Representative has a stronger position than Dodik and that in the end his decision will be respected, DW reports.
E.Dz.
