The Initiative for Monitoring European Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has published an Alternative Report on the progress of our country on the path to membership in the European Union (EU) for 2021, within which it was emphasized that there is not much progress.
The report states that the most important political actors in BiH, when asked what they think about the country’s European path, answer that they support full membership in the EU, while on the other hand, the results in meeting the 14 priorities of the Commission’s Opinion on BiH’s application for EU membership and the slowing down reform processes suggest that this support is largely nominal.
It was also stated that the last year in BiH was marked by the decision of the High Representative to ban the denial of genocide and other war crimes, the glorification of war criminals, and the boycott of state institutions by representatives of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity following that decision.
”State legislative and executive bodies have been blocked, entity institutions in the RS have initiated a process of unconstitutional transfer of competencies from the state to the entity, and the Federation of BiH (FBiH) has not implemented the results of the 2018 elections this year either. The situation was further complicated by negotiations on electoral legislation reform, which once again highlighted the opposing views of the ruling FBiH parties,” it is stated in the report.
Although there have been some changes in the judiciary in 2021, no amendments to the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) Law and other reform laws have been adopted, and no significant progress has been made in the fight against corruption.
To recall, the Stabilization and Association Agreement entered into force on June 1st, 2015, which significantly increased the obligations of the authorities in BiH because the scope of reforms was extended from trade issues to EU regulations as a whole.
BiH’s application for membership in the EU was submitted to the EU Council Presidency on February 15th, 2016, and in December of the same year, the European Commission sent BiH a detailed Questionnaire, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
