Douglas Jones, who was nominated by outgoing US President Joe Biden in July last year as the new ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, will not come to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The nomination, which for months after a hearing in a Senate committee in September awaited a vote in the plenary session of the Senate, has been “returned” to the US President.
Namely, according to Senate rules, all nominations that are not confirmed by the beginning of the new Senate session are “returned to the President”, the Senate announced.
“Nominations that are neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are presented shall not be acted upon at any subsequent session without the President re-referring them to the Senate; and if the Senate adjourns or takes a recess for more than thirty days, all nominations pending and not finally acted upon during the adjournment or recess shall be returned to the President by the Secretary and shall not be reconsidered unless the President re-refers them to the Senate”, states Rule XXXI, Section 6 of the Senate Rules.
This procedural decision means that the successor to Michael Murphy, who has been the US ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina since February 2022, will be succeeded in Sarajevo by a diplomat or candidate sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina by Donald Trump.
Let us recall that Trump has already had the opportunity to send an ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina once.
During his first term, the ambassador’s duties were performed by Eric Nelson from February 2019 to February 2022. Nelson recently said in an interview for our television that he does not expect a change in the political US administration towards our country, regardless of which administration the new ambassador to Sarajevo comes from.
In the weeks after his election victory, Donald Trump announced several nominations for ambassadorial positions, one of which is the nomination for ambassador to Croatia, but he has not yet announced the name of a potential candidate for the position in Sarajevo, N1 writes.
