Brussels is waiting for concrete moves from the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The European Union has already provided funds for reforms that could benefit both citizens and businesses. The local authorities are on the move to fulfill their tasks and unlock the money from the first tranche of the Growth Plan.
European money on the table. But the Brussels door is closed for Bosnia and Herzegovina, where even the Joint Commission for EU Integration does not have a quorum to maintain, so the European path is stuck – between blockade and minimal progress. Is the slowing down of the EU path due to cooled partnership relations or calculation ahead of pre-election positioning?
“We know that political positions are quite confrontational, that some of these options are, as they say, buried in trenches in their positions, and now the question is how to get them out of those trenches,” said Zdenko Ćosić, a delegate in the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Dženan Đonlagić, a delegate in the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, assessed: “The fact that the European road has actually been turned into macadam, that it no longer exists.”
Predrag Kojović, a member of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina said: “It seems to me that the Council of Ministers at this moment has only one goal – to do nothing.”
Between procedures, agreements and political fights – European money is captured. The withdrawal of 68.4 million euros is in the hands of a party whose president has declared the end of the European path and whose ministers are institutionally implementing its blockade. The proposal of two key agreements, without which there is no money from the Growth Plan, is still awaited. The Minister of Finance and Treasury of Bosnia and Herzegovina Srđan Amidžić offers promises instead.
“We now have these two agreed documents. Before we receive the final version from the European Commission, I have to send a request for pre-financing and that is all the work that has been done. Whether I am optimistic that we will withdraw these funds and whether they will be in use in such a short period of time is another matter,” said Amidžić.
“At the moment, we are still waiting for Minister Amidžić to submit two drafts of financial contracts, the usual ones that are drawn up in half an hour. This has been going on for some time. Frankly, my impression is that everything is being done to prevent all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in both entities and in the Brčko District, from accessing the money sent to them by the EU, which is two thousand million BAM”, Kojović pointed out.
Borjana Krišto, chairwoman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said: “Things are moving and we will see how much responsibility we will show in the implementation of these projects. What is important to say is that we are not late in the formal sense.”
For the region, the Growth Plan represents a development opportunity, while for Bosnia and Herzegovina it becomes a political dispute that is further complicated. The definition of the list of projects that would be financed with European money has not yet been completed, and the territorial counting of projects between the RS and the Federation of BiH has already begun.
“We, as the RS, cannot get into the credit debt, because it is about credit funds, and we don’t even know the list of priorities – which projects will go to the RS and which to the Federation. This is an essential issue that no one is dealing with at the moment, and it should be completed by the Directorate for European Integration, whose leadership position is not filled by the HDZ and SNSD”, said Amidžić.
Forto says that there is an agreement between HDZ and SNSD that nothing should be done until the elections. “They will never tell you that, but I can’t explain the behavior in which we waited four months to get into debt, only to get something from the European Commission in the end.”
So again, the money intended for Bosnia and Herzegovina could go to other countries in the Western Balkans that are implementing reforms and withdrawing millions of euros, such as Serbia, Albania and Montenegro. The growth plan, instead of an opportunity, has become an instrument of political calculation and reckoning – who is to blame for the lack of European money and roads.
