For months, without success, the European Commission has been asking Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to introduce visas for seven countries. In addition to Turkey, China and Russia, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Oman and Qatar are also on the list.
As two ministers, Head of Diplomacy Elmedin Konakovic and Security Minister Nenad Nesic, told, the reason for this is that the Serbian and Bosniak ministers in the BiH Council of Ministers are expressly against the introduction of visas to Russia, China and Turkey.
The European Commission insists on this because of the harmonization of the foreign policy of BiH with the Union, which BiH undertook to do when it became a candidate country for membership.
“The European Union (EU) expects from BiH, as a candidate country, full compliance with the EU policies in several areas, including visa policy,” said Ferdinand Koenig, spokesman for the EU Delegation to BiH.
As the competent ministers point out, for Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Oman and Qatar, there is a possibility of introducing visas in order to partially fulfill the EU requirement.
“I was recently asked this by the Austrian Minister of the Interior (Gerhard Karner). Don’t expect me to say that we are going to introduce visas to Russia and China, or from some other ministers that we are going to introduce visas to Turkey,” said Nenad Nesic, Minister of Security of BiH.
His colleague in the BiH Council of Ministers, Elmedin Konakovic, recently repeated the same in an address to the media.
“We will not listen to them when I talk about Turkey. They are friends of BiH,” Foreign Affairs Minister Elmedin Konakovictold the media on September 7th, adding that “there is no environment in which ministers from the Republika Srpska (RS) entity could raise their hands for introduction of visas for Russians or Chinese”.
The Council of Ministers of BiH consists of the chairperson and nine ministers, three of whom are Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs as “constituent nations”, and one minister from the “Others”.
In order for a proposal to be put on the agenda of the session, it is necessary that the chairwoman and her two deputies, who cannot be from the same constituent nation, vote for it.
In order for any decision to be adopted, with a simple majority, at least one minister from each nation must vote for it, Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
