The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, met with the members of the BiH Presidency on Tuesday and started a series of talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina officials.
Chairman of the BiH Presidency Željko Komšić and members of the state leadership Denis Bećirović and Željka Cvijanović met with Von der Leyen and Rutte.
Plenković refused to meet with Komšić
As explained by the Croatian delegation, the consistent line of the president of the Croatian government is that he does not meet with Komšić, who was not elected as a Croatian member of the Presidency by the will of the Croatian people in BiH and with whom other institutions of the Republic of Croatia have no contact.
They remind that Plenković did the same during his working visits to BiH in 2021 and 2023, when he held meetings with officials of the Council of Ministers and the Parliament of BiH.
“Taking into account that the practice of over-voting the Croatian people in the election of a member of the BiH Presidency was repeated in the general elections in 2022, the prime minister has no intention of changing his approach,” is the position of Plenković’s office.
After returning to Zagreb, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković commented on his decision not to attend the meeting of European representatives with the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because of the chairman Željko Komšić.
“I even think it’s good that it happened today when we came for a joint visit to Sarajevo. So that this fact itself becomes even more aware of our partners, the president of the European Commission and the Dutch prime minister. They understood it very well, I said before the meeting, they respect that. Now their associates are probably more aware of the problem that exists when it comes to the legitimate representation of Croats,” Plenković said.
He repeated the position that Željko Komšić was not a “legitimately” elected member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from among Croats for the Croatian government, adding that he was not elected by the majority will of Croats.
“That fact is a huge obstacle for us. He has not been received here since I was the Prime Minister even once. Neither did we visit him this time, nor did we do it in 2023, nor in 2021. Our position is in that sense consistent,” Plenković said.
