The gathering of right-wing politicians from European countries in Banja Luka, which was announced by the President of Republika Srpska (RS) Milorad Dodik for October, would be for this sanctioned leader of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) entity a window “to any kind of international context”.
This is the assessment of analysts with whom journalists spoke about the “meeting of sovereignists” that Dodik announced for the end of October in the largest city in the RS.
Dodik is currently under sanctions from the United States (U.S.) and Great Britain due to “threats to the Dayton Agreement”, and since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he has met with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, several times, and announced a new meeting in November.
Upon request, journalists did not receive confirmation that this event is being organized, nor information on who would finance it, either from the Cabinet of the President of the RS or from Dodik’s party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD).
Speaking as a guest on TV show on September 27th, Dodik said that he plans to hold a meeting of European sovereignists in Banja Luka.
“I have communication with a structure, what today is called a sovereignist structure, which in principle is closer to political conservatism, that a large gathering of those European sovereignists will be held in Banja Luka at the end of October and that I preside or lead that gathering,” said Dodik.
He added that “people from a dozen European countries would come” who, as he claims, are aiming for a good result in the elections for the European Parliament in June 2024.
Who are the ‘sovereignists’ at the European level?
Among the conservative parliamentary clubs in the European Parliament (EP), the Club of European Conservatives and Reformists and the Representatives of the Identity and Democracy Group stand out. They have a total of 126 out of 705 deputies.
Building a ‘right-wing international’
Senior research associate at the Austrian Institute for International Politics and lecturer at the University of Vienna, Vedran Dzihic, told that the leader of the RS contacts with the so-called t”right-wing international” wants to keep the window open “toward any kind of international context”.
“That right-wing international inherits certain values, which are often and in most cases anti-democratic, anti-liberal, conservative-nationalist, xenophobic and racist,” Dzihic points out, Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
