The Special Representative of the EU to BIH Ambassador Peter Sorensen announced today in Gradiška that he is an optimist regarding the solution for the passing of BiH citizens from municipalities close to the border, after Croatia enters the EU on 1 July.
He noted that he could not say what type of solution it would be, because consultations of representatives of BIH, Croatia and the European Commission on the regime that will be in effect is underway.
“The first thing that is happening when this regime is defined, as it was now in the process of enlargement, is that everything is being done for this procedure to be as simple as possible. We are asking Croatia, which will become an EU member, to honor everything that our system requests, so the burden we put on Croatia in this sense will be felt here as well, but we are trying to alleviate the situation’’ explained Sorensen in a statement to journalists.
So far, five or six meetings on this issue have been held and, according to him, he is an optimist with regard to a solution, but noted that it cannot exactly say what the solution will be like, because this will be a decision by the parties in this process.
Sorenson noted that it is a good thing in BiH that it has a good system of issuing travel documents.
Until no, more than one and a half million biometric passports have been handed out, and he said that if this is compared with the number of people travelling, most of them have these travel documents.
“So I am personally convinced that what we considered a problem one month and a half ago will not be such a problem for a month’’, concluded the Special Representative of the EU to BIH.
