The Minister of Finance and Treasury of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Srđan Amidžić, today, after the session of the Council of Ministers of BiH, expressed his satisfaction that, as he said, they had managed to find a solution when it comes to BHANSA.
“What is important is that the agency will be able to continue functioning normally, regardless of the difficulties it has encountered, given the arbitration dispute with Viaduct and the blocked funds from Eurocontrol. All employees, when it comes to BHANSA, will have regular incomes, and BHANSA will be able to regularly fulfill all its obligations. So that what is related to the agency itself, to transport, not only passenger, but also commercial, hospital and any other character, will not be brought into question,” stated Minister Amdižić.
He said that this is the same proposal that Minister Staša Košarac and he proposed at an extraordinary session almost 15 days ago.
“We are glad that our proposal was adopted and that BHANSA will be able to function absolutely normally,” stated Amidžić.
He also said that he could not believe “that colleagues from the Federation of BiH, primarily Bosniak leaders, are so strongly obstructing the adoption of an annual, but very important document such as the budget of the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the international obligations of Bosnia and Herzegovina for 2025”.
According to him, the adoption of the budget is something that is normal.
“There is not only the issue of Viaduct. The issue of salaries and increases in income for all employees in the institutions of BiH is foreseen in the budget for 2025. And we cannot get into a situation where such a document is adopted, and on the other hand, the institutions enter a phase of normal functioning and overcoming the problems they have,” said Amidžić.
Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of BiH Staša Košarac said that he had the ambition to put the problem of transport operators in the Republika Srpska Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the focus of consideration at the session of the Council of Ministers of BiH.
“The Council of Ministers of BiH considered the information about the problems already on June 27, 2024. This conclusion clearly defines that the Ministry of Communications and Transport, in cooperation with the Ministry of Security and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of BiH, with the competent bodies of the European Union, should take action to exempt drivers from the restrictions on their stay in the EU territory. After ten months of the conclusion being valid, the Council of Ministers still does not know what Minister Edin Forto has done,” said Košarac.
He added that the problem cannot be solved by “ignoring it and pretending it did not happen, and we have a very clear message from the carriers that they have accumulated problems, they have delays at border crossings, they have problems with movement and they have a problem with our DCM network not being a service for them in the countries where they have problems”.
“The carriers are ours, they are not someone else’s. For this reason, although we do not have constitutional jurisdiction, I emphasized this issue at the Council of Ministers. I had an even greater ambition in that context that today the Chairwoman would address the Chairwoman of the European Commission and request an urgent meeting. It is not true that Bosnia and Herzegovina and its institutions cannot negotiate with EU institutions,” said Košarac.
According to him, the Stabilization and Association Agreement is a bilateral agreement, one side is BiH, the other side is the European Union.
“We must work much more actively on this issue. We do not want to make this a political problem, this is an economic problem, a problem of people’s existence,” said Košarac.
