While domestic politicians are calculating, citizens are leaving. In just over two months, 369 people renounced their citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while almost 2,700 people did so last year. Is the fact that almost 98,000 people renounced their citizenship from 1996 to today a sufficient alarm for the authorities?
Edin Hadžimehmedović came to Austria in 2002. He received the citizenship of that country after twelve years. He renounced his citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“You simply have certain opportunities, you have certain political stability, governments fall, and in Austria there is always political turmoil. Austria is nothing special in that respect, but it all happens, there is one policy, there is one culture of behavior in that politics, which regardless of all the turmoil that happening gives you a sense of that political stability”.
In addition to the devastating fact of how many citizens have so far left Bosnia and Herzegovina and renounced their citizenship, the Union for Sustainable Return and Integration points to, as they say, a discriminatory law that makes it difficult to regain citizenship for those who renounced it on various grounds. At the same time, they point to the fact that the administrative fee for the waiver is 800 marks. Citizens are leaving, the state
“In this case, we receive income from those citizens who have to pay for it, and of course in the budget of the Council of Ministers, there is an item about the renunciation of income from our citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
In addition to the trend of departure from Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has been going on for a long time, recently a negative factor affecting the demographic trend is the negative natural increase. Through additional emigration, the pyramid of the most productive part of the population is thinning, demographer Aleksandar Čavić points out.
“We have entered a negative spiral, and without some strategic and planned social response, we simply will not be able to get out of it, but the results we will record in terms of demographic trends will continue to be negative, unfortunately and increasingly negative in the future”.
“People are not leaving, people are fleeing to save themselves from the self-appointed guardians of the vital national interest for the sake of a better future, a job and a normal life and social atmosphere to save themselves and their own children,” says sociologist Esad Bajtal.
Citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina most often renounce the citizenship of BiH in order to acquire the citizenship of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Austria. Bosnia and Herzegovina has signed agreements on dual citizenship with Serbia, Croatia and Sweden, and citizens who acquire the citizenship of those countries can also retain the citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the period from January 1, 1996 to March 10 of this year, 97,296 people renounced their BiH citizenship, 17,997 of whom renounced their citizenship in the last five years.
4,493 people renounced their citizenship in 2018, 4,160 in 2019, 3,169 in 2020, 3,111 in 2021, while 2,695 people renounced last year.
Last year, 561 persons acquired BiH citizenship, 12 of them under a special procedure for persons of particular benefit to BiH, where decisions on the award were made by the Council of Ministers of BiH.
When renouncing, persons pay an administrative fee, so those who renounce BiH citizenship in order to acquire citizenship of the former SFRY pay a fee of 200 BAM, while those who acquire citizenship of another country pay an administrative fee of 800 BAM.
