The Republika Srpska (RS) continues to register state property in its own name, despite the decisions of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the High Representative in BiH, according to which the entity laws enabling this are invalid.
This was confirmed to Radio Free Europe (RSE) in several local communities.
This is property that has been used by public institutions and institutions since the end of the war in BiH and the signing of the Dayton Agreement in 1995.
RS legalized the registration of such property in February of this year. The law on immovable property that was passed at that time, however, was invalidated by the high representative in BiH, who has the right to do so according to the Bonn mandate from 1997.
A request to the Constitutional Court of BiH to assess whether this law is in accordance with the Constitution was also submitted by six delegates of the House of Peoples of the Parliament of BiH, and the decision is still awaited.
Ognjen Milinkovic, the head of the Municipality of Gacko in the south of BiH, told that everything is properly accounted for by the local community, i.e. the entity, and that he “respects all the laws of RS and behaves accordingly”. He states that “Christian Schmidt is not a high representative in BiH for him”, and that “all the decisions he makes are illegal”.
Miroslav Drljaca, the mayor of Novi Grad in northwestern BiH, tells that “a lot of things were not registered in the previous period”, and that every year the list of properties in the cadastre is updated.
“What is the property of the municipality is in Novi Grad, and the state property, the part around the forests, the user and manager is the public company ‘Sume- Forests of the RS,” Drljaca explained.
He believes that Schmidt’s decision is a political decision.
“It is challenging the right of RS and local communities to manage that property, after all, it has always been a subject of speculation,” Drljaca believes.
In Srebrenica, the property that was not claimed within the legal time frame by the business entities who were the owners, became the property of the municipality, the head of this municipality in the east of BiH, Mladen Grujicic, mentioned.
He said that he “doesn’t know what they mean by other property” and that he does not have that information. He adds that the forests on the territory of the municipality are registered with the Public Company “Sume RS”, and that some local roads are owned by the municipality, while others are owned by “Sume“. He points out that they do not know what property the Municipality owns.
The Office of the High Representative (OHR) emphasized that “state property can only be disposed of by the state of BiH as its owner”.
They warn that any disposal of property that is carried out contrary to the Law on the Temporary Prohibition of Disposal of State Property of BiH is “null and void”. They add that this “endangers the rule of law, undermines legal security and business security, which are decisive factors that are taken into account when making any investment decision”.
The Constitution of BiH does not contain explicit provisions on the division of state property between different levels of government. That is why the state and entities cannot agree on their individual rights to use, manage and dispose of such property.
In the absence of constitutionally defined definitions, the entities have retained possession of most of the public property located on their territory, RSE writes.
E.Dz.
