Two days ago, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and representatives of the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) planned to discuss the fulfillment of BiH’s obligations and the start of negotiations on full membership, as well as potential billions of euros in aid.
Before her arrival in Sarajevo, the House of Representatives of the state parliament unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the European Union (EU) to open negotiations on the membership of BiH.
In May 2019, the European Commission set 14 priorities for BiH that it must fulfill before then.
The publication of the report on the fulfillment of obligations was announced for November 8th.
While the authorities brag about five adopted “European” laws, the key ones related to the judiciary have not been changed, and European parliamentarians say that only one condition has been fully met in four years – the abolition of the death penalty in the Republika Srpska (RS) entity.
“The first of the six judgments of the European Court of Human Rights against BiH, which today are called ‘Sejdic-Finci’, was passed 14 years ago, as many key priorities. Nothing was done to act on them. To be very clear, the development we currently have is not a success story,” explained Romeo Franz, a German representative in the European Parliament who heads the delegation for BiH.
Franz says that “here and there there was little and very limited progress, but it is far from sufficient, regular and uniform” and that “firm and stable commitment of all political actors is needed, not political games and the constant threat of blockades “.
In the past months, BiH adopted five state laws that are part of EU priorities, although, according to the assessments of, for example, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe, some of them are not harmonized with the EU.
The authorities state that amendments have been adopted to the law on freedom of access to information, the human rights ombudsman, the law on foreigners, the law on wines, and the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH (HJPC), the institution that appoints, disciplines and dismisses all judges and prosecutors in the state.
There is no political agreement on the laws that the EU named as “key”, namely the laws on the prevention of conflicts of interest, on the prevention of money laundering, and the laws on the Court of BiH and the Constitutional Court of BiH.
How visible is BiH’s progress?
Romeo Franz, who is the vice-president of the delegation of the European Parliament for relations with BiH and Kosovo, says that the authorities “did not do enough” and points the finger at the rulers of RS led by Milorad Dodik.
Franz pointed out that after three years, only one of the 14 priorities has been fulfilled – the abolition of the death penalty in the RS entity. However, that provision was not abolished by the entity parliament, but by the Constitutional Court of BiH in October 2019.
Is there any progress?
Matjaz Nemec, Slovenian representative in the European Parliament and member of the committee for BiH, noted that “progress is, however, visible if compared to the situation of a few years ago”, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
