The delegation of the European Union in BiH, in a post on the X social network, pointed out that this week saw some positive steps on BiH’s path towards the EU.
The Council of Ministers of BiH, they reminded, adopted the Program of Economic Reforms, while the House of Representatives of the State Parliament adopted amendments to the Law on Civil Service and that this legislative procedure should be completed as soon as possible. They also consider it positive that the Management Board of the Public Procurement Agency adopted a strategy that now needs to be passed by the BiH Council of Ministers.
“But some of the most important laws on the European road, especially the law on conflict of interest and the law on courts, have not been completed. The most important thing is that they are adopted and that they are in accordance with European standards before the meeting of the European Council on March 21 and 22,” said the EU Delegation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The working group for the development of the program for the integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union determined the working version of the text of the program important for the opening of negotiations and referred it to the further procedure, said the assistant director of the Directorate for European Integration of BiH, Darija Ramljak.
Ramljak emphasized that BiH was the only country that responded to the European Commission’s questionnaire without an integration program and that it is unthinkable to start negotiations on EU accession without a planning document because this, along with an analytical review of the legislation, is the basis for the European Commission to set benchmarks for opening and closing of individual chapters.
“BiH, after several delays in the process, is finally at the stage of preparing the working version of the integration program, which has been sent to the authorities in accordance with the conclusions of the Collegium (for European integration),” Ramljak said, adding that consultations with the European Commission will follow.
The development of the program began in 2020, and Ramljak explained the slowness in its determination by the fact that there were many participants in this process and high turnover in the working groups.
She emphasized that during the development of the integration program, which is an obligation of BiH from the Stabilization and Association Agreement, the Coordination Mechanism was respected.
“The creation of the program included the determination of priority EU regulations with which BiH needs to be harmonized by the end of 2025, as well as the establishment of a database in which about 1,700 existing regulations from all levels of government in BiH have been entered,” added Ramljak.
When it comes to the new methodology of accession negotiations with the EU, she explained that this means that not every individual chapter is opened, but clusters are opened.
“In that sense, it may be a little more favorable, but we cannot close the cluster until we finish all the individual chapters. In any case, with each new methodology, with each new negotiation process, what we see from the neighbors’ experiences, the conditions are higher, the benchmarks are higher The scale is constantly rising and every delay in the opening of negotiations means a greater number of tasks before BiH”, concluded Ramljak.
