After the agenda of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina was defeated yesterday by SNSD votes, a new chance to adopt European reform laws and appoint a chief negotiator with the European Union is on Monday. How long will the obstruction of the European path last and who is not for integration?
“It is time for everyone to say whether they are for the European path of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Borjana Krišto, Chairwoman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, after the session.
Declaratively, everyone is for it, but essentially – the main anti-European wheel in power is the SNSD. The creators of the crisis and obstruction, among which stands the Brussels path of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is, therefore, in the hands of those who put political blackmail on the table instead of reforms. So every session is a blockade in the making.
Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the UNSA Enver Kazaz believes that Chairwoman Krišto ‘should openly appoint a “brakeman”.
“He is visible from the plane. Why she doesn’t do it – we can only assume. Probably so as not to spoil the good relations between Čović and Dodik”, he concluded.
“We cannot put the attitude of the HDZ as a whole towards the integration path into the European Union and the SNSD on the same level, that is absolutely true. But when you have such open and obvious blockages and anti-European policies from your partner, it is time for the HDZ to finally declare – whether it sees the perspective of continuing the integration path in partnership with the SNSD”, says Elmir Sadiković, professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, UNSA.
Journalist Gordana Katana, as she says, sees no solution other than a reshuffle of the government.
“I don’t know what else Borjana Krišto wants? To send Milorad Dodik a letter saying: ‘We want to be part of the government in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but we don’t want this, this and that.’ In fact, they don’t want Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then everything else that is there. I really don’t see at this moment what the solution is other than a reshuffle of government at the state level,” Katana believes.
Synchronized to the end – partnership above the interests of the state, without responsibility. Policies that are also trying to cement the ethnic veto in EU laws, which is the case with the amendments to the Law on the HJPC, which, experts claim, is making a replica of the House of Peoples. And this, like the one on the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is unacceptable – not because of the essence, but because of the package, which also includes the name of the chief negotiator, whom the SNSD has drawn to strengthen itself as a decision-making factor.
“I don’t know what can be done, for SNSD to get a negotiator who will obstruct the European path, for laws tailored to SNSD, or Milorad Dodik, to be adopted, which are to the detriment of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I don’t see a third way,” Katana added.
“On one side, we have the SNSD and the ruling coalition from the RS, which seems to have a principled position that they want to join the EU, but does not fully support the High Representative – they call him an occupier. On the other side, there are the Troika parties, which, probably in fear of the results of the elections in less than a year, and for which the campaign began almost a year ago, are advocating a position that is fundamentally anti-Dodik, anti-Senesze,” says Milan Sitarski, an expert associate at the Institute for Socio-Political Research in Mostar.
The key month and date is December 17, as the last chance until which the EU will wait for positive news from Trg Bosne i Hercegovine. And if there is a compromise by then, and the so-called SNSD blockade is bypassed, what is the Troika’s plan, that these laws and the negotiator go through the procedure through the State Parliament, and not the Council of Ministers, the question is whether they are in line with the EU acquis?
“If we look at these and previous laws, we have often made decisions that were supported by the European Union, which have proven to be more harmful to BiH in the long run. We should understand the integration path as a process of building a functional state and functional state institutions. In this sense, liberalizing criteria or adopting bad legal solutions will not benefit us as a society,” concludes Sadiković.
For now, there is no benefit, because Bosnia and Herzegovina has received zero euros out of the expected two billion marks from the Growth Plan, and the unrealized work on the reform path will remain if, by Monday, when a new session of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina is scheduled, there is obstruction again, instead of SNSD’s “yes” to the EU path, Federalna writes.
