The Chairperson of the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Council of Ministers, Borjana Kristo, two days ago sent the initial working version of the document Reform Plan for BiH to Oliver Varhelyi, Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement. And after the Brussels political forum, representatives of the BiH authorities are moderately optimistic that by March they will meet the conditions for opening membership negotiations with the European Union (EU). The dynamics so far indicate that only two of the 14 priorities have been implemented and that there are certain advances in various fields, but also ultimate obstacles on key issues.
”There is no reason for great optimism, unless we hope that the EU abandons the current standard of assessing the fulfillment of conditions, as happened in the case of granting candidate status to BiH, ” says Srdjan Blagovcanin, president of the Management Board of Tansparency International (TI) in BiH.
”This event in Brussels was a kind of performance that was needed both by the domestic elites and the people in Brussels, that BiH was not left aside, that they count on her to be in the ‘stoppage time‘ until March, when a deadline was set, after which the European Commission (EC) will make an additional assessment that things will still move from a standstill,” told Srdjan Blagovcacnin, President of the TIBiH ManagementBoard.
The government has not fulfilled what it promised, say the opposition. There will be no open negotiations until the end of the year. The reform program drawn up by the ad hoc working group of the Council of Ministers is nothing more than what the EC stated in the report on unfulfilled priorities, the DF deputy is convinced.
”I would say that it is again a wish list and a list of reform solutions for which we know what the current government needs to do, that is what the EC wrote in its report, that is what the government promised at the beginning of the mandate when they triumphantly announced BiH’s European path,” stated Dzenan Djonlagic, representative in the House of Representatives of Parliamentary Assembly (PA) of BiH.
The EU has also experienced criticism. From the open invitation to the countries of the region to the politically motivated admission of Bulgaria and Romania to the membership, to the message to forget about the enlargement and back again, this is a completely unprincipled approach for the vice-president of the PDP.
”The only consensus we had here in the last 100 – 500 years was thrown into the dumpster by you, and today we are left without a political paradigm in BiH. Dayton was destroyed. These reforms that we did to go to the EU have lost their meaning because obviously we are not going to join the EU and then to put any actor, even these existing ones, he does not know what his political paradigm is, what to do,” said Milko Grmusa, vice president of the PDP of the Republika Srpska (RS).
Authoristies promise. We will work and discuss the possible.
”I hope that soon after our return to BiH we will have another operative meeting of the coalition at the state level, in which we would go to the solutions of at least those problems about which we do not have any political dilemmas,” told Elmedin Konakovic, Minister of Foreign Affairs of BiH.
”In the future, we should look for ways to encourage those in the EU who are thinking that BiH should meet additional and additional and additional conditions, and also how to encourage political subjects in BiH to be ready for greater compromise and dialogue in order to give strength to those in the EU as well who support us immensely,” said Marinko Cavara, President of the Federation of BiH (FBiH).
The RS insists on the entity’s visibility on all issues in accordance with, as they say, constitutional powers. Hence a little more skepticism regarding the fulfillment of the conditions.
”We have a serious backlog. We created a dynamic that worked so that issues were resolved with a certain dynamic, we respected that dynamic. Five or six laws were passed when it came to the Constitutional Court, then everything stopped. And now it stopped. And the Constitutional Court and discussion will be an unavoidable topic, ” said Milorad Dodik, President of RS.
Even fulfilled conditions, such as the Law on the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC), do not give hope for sincerity because it is the result of political trade, not compromise and fulfillment of European standards and requirements.
A special problem highlighted by Blagovcanin is the autocratic restriction of the work of civil society and the media in RS, which represents the distancing of part of the country from the recommendations of the EC, BHRT reports.
E.Dz.
