The Chairman of the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dragan Čović, who took over this position today as part of the regular rotation, said at the traditional meeting with journalists that today they also had a session of the Collegium, and that it was agreed to schedule a regular session of the House of Peoples, which should be held on June 30.
According to him, that session would include all agreements, reports, appointments and initiatives that are not disputed by any office, and there are approximately 100 of them, so that session would have approximately 100 items on the agenda.
“The obligation of the three members of the Collegium was to once again see if we could add something more to what has been disputed so far, which is why the sessions were interrupted, abandoned and why there was no quorum,” Čović stated.
He announced that the second regular session should be held by the middle of July, the agenda of which would include all the laws that have been in place for some time, which are also not disputed.
“Which means we are going through some elimination, what has been a controversy so far, to remove it, and again there would be about 30 such items on the agenda. If we ended this in this way, we would have only about 20 percent of the 164 materials that are in the procedure, which would not be completed in the House of Peoples of the BiH Parliament,” stated Čović.
He added that they planned to schedule two emergency sessions, which they would dedicate to the European path, to European laws.
“The law on the HJPC, the law on the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina should only be held at one emergency session. That is, the budget of Bosnia and Herzegovina for 2026. I believe that, if it comes to the procedure, we will also have the budget adopted by the House of Peoples by the middle of the seventh month. With this, we could say that we have reduced ourselves to those contentious matters that have been a point of contention in our normal work until now, of which there would not be too many – a few laws and probably a few initiatives that have been creating a point of contention in the work for a long time, about shifts and so on,” Cović said, adding that they managed to agree on that today.
He expressed his belief that he will try to work collegially, that is, that he will not call any session, and that not all three members of the Collegium, that is, representatives of all three nations, are able to attend the session.
“It seems to me that this morning’s agreement gives optimism and that we will be able to meet here already on June 30 and think a little differently. Maybe there will be an emergency session by then, arranged by the Collegium or a part of the Collegium. There are always initiatives from other representatives of the House of Peoples who have scheduled emergency sessions until now. We will see if there will be such initiatives in this one. My wish was to talk with the representatives of the Bosniak Club and this morning I had a conversation with my colleague Šefik “I still have a conversation with Džaferović and the representatives of the Club of Croats within the Club of Croats today. I believe that we will all support this concept of work and that we will enter the summer break with possibly a few points that will probably burden us in the coming time, and that we can clear everything by then,” said Čović.
He also referred to the current political moment, judging that it is very challenging.
“From what we are doing on the European road, I mentioned two laws and the desire not to fall too far behind the initiatives coming from the European Union when it comes to Ukraine and Moldova, to simply try through our friends from the Republic of Croatia, but also from Brussels in general, to place our place somewhere within those negotiations. But we have to take the first step, and that’s why I think this urgent session will be about European laws, maybe also about negotiators, we’ll see how it goes,” Čović said.
He added that the initiative that has already been launched due to the resignation of the high representative will also be interesting in the coming time.
“We will see how it will end. There is very little time left for the parties to reach an agreement through the Peace Implementation Council. Two different positions of the United States of America and the European Union, not to speculate about it, but it seems to me that it should be somehow left behind us from this session of ours on June 30,” Čović said.
He added that there are still many issues that burden internal stability from the aspect of security, but primarily from the aspect of the economic developments we have.
“We will try to separate the electoral part of our activities from what should be working at the level of the Council of Ministers, or the two houses of the Parliament. We will give our full contribution as the House of Peoples to have the atmosphere that all the inhabitants of BiH need, to work in a completely different environment for the next few months,” said Čović.
He added that they will try to be as partner-oriented as possible towards each other.
“There are only 15 of us in the House of Peoples and I think that many things can be agreed upon if we spend a little time on that agreement,” said Čović.
He added that he thinks that the session on June 30 should not be controversial to anyone. We will use that time, he said, to harmonize these laws.
“Today, there are 48 legal solutions in the procedure, which are in the procedure. Only six of them went through the Council of Ministers. All the others went according to various other initiatives, administrative ones. Among those 48 laws, at this moment there were 19 of them that were in some way disputed by some of the representatives of one, another or a third nation. My proposal will be the same as for agreements, reports and so on, that what of the laws is not disputed by anyone, let’s put them right away in one session and finish the story. Then we will be reduced to the circle of those whom someone considers controversial, regardless of what is controversial,” Čović said.
As for the two European laws, they will go to one of the emergency sessions that will be scheduled first.
“These two items on the agenda – the law on the HJPC and the law on the Court do not follow an urgent procedure. They have already been agreed upon using an abbreviated procedure. In other words, no one will have a problem discussing these two legal solutions in the first reading, because corrections can come if there is room for such a thing,” Čović explained.
He added that he does not classify them as disputed laws, “regardless of what someone thinks about these proposals today, and considering that they were given in the House of Representatives in a completely different initiative, different proposals”.
He noted that these are proposals that came from the relevant Minister of Justice of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
