The Embassy of the United States (U.S.) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) answered the questions of the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic about the state property of BiH, saying once again that the property belongs to the state.
On June 11th, Vucic, in a post on his Instagram account, accused the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo of causing a crisis in BiH, among other things, because the Embassy claims that the property does not belong to the entities, but to the state.
“How, where and since when is it written somewhere that the property belongs to the central authorities and not to the entities,” Vucic asked the Embassy.
The Embassy says that there is no need to revisit the well-documented legal history and court rulings regarding state property in BiH.
“As Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien put it in a speech in February 2024: ‘There is a way to talk about property by talking about it in the relevant institutions. But the starting point is still clear: property belongs to the state'”, they said from the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo.
O’Brien then said that in 2001 BiH signed the Agreement on Succession Issues of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ), which was ratified by the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH and attributed state property to BiH, not to the entities.
BiH has not had a law on state property for 20 years due to the lack of political consensus.
Vucic‘s questions regarding state property followed harsh criticism of the “all-Serbian declaration” from the Embassy in Sarajevo. The Declaration on the Protection of National and Political Rights and the Common Future of the Serbian People was adopted in Belgrade on June 8th.
The U.S. Embassy said that the Declaration has its roots in legal misinformation and that the conclusions do not represent a defense of the Dayton Peace Agreement, as the authors claim, “but a deliberate and dangerous attack on that agreement and the state institutions of BiH“.
Republika Srpska (RS) previously tried to pass laws that would regulate the issue of property at the entity level. Those legal solutions were overturned by the Constitutional Court of BiH.
The U.S. Embassy in BiH also reminded in May last year that “according to international law and established state practice, only states have the necessary authority to inherit the rights and obligations of predecessor states, and in this case, it is the state of BiH.”
At the time, they pointed out that this issue was resolved by the Constitution of BiH – which is part of the Dayton Peace Agreement – which states: “The Republic of BiH, whose official name will henceforth be BiH, will continue its legal existence according to international law as a state”.
In September 2004, the Council for the Implementation of Peace asked BiH to find a permanent solution to the issue of state property, and the disposal of such property is prohibited by a law imposed a year later by the then-high representative in BiH, Paddy Ashdown, RSE writes.
E.Dz.
