EU sounds alarm on Bosnia stability
ELITSA VUCHEVA
23.10.2008 @ 10:40 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The EU on Wednesday (22 October) expressed "serious concern" about the situation in Bosnia and the lack of reform in the country, calling on its leaders to behave responsibly.
"The lack of a common vision among the country's leaders about its future and the absence of consensus on EU reforms harm its European prospects. There is open disagreement on most political questions, while no sense of urgency or responsibility to overcome this stalemate," EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn warned.
Sarajevo - at a decisive crossroads. (Photo: Wikipedia.org)
Speaking to MEPs in Strasbourg, the commissioner also hailed the fact that Sarajevo signed a pre-accession deal with the EU – the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) – last December, which "proves that progress can be achieved and crises overcome, when the political will exists."
"However, this consensus has since collapsed and reforms halted," Mr Rehn stressed.
Bosnia and Herzegovina as it exists now – split into the two semi-autonomous entities of Republika Srpska, mainly populated by Serbs (88%), and the Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – was created by the Dayton peace agreements ending the 1992-1995 Bosnia war.
Inter-ethnic divisions have often stalled political and administrative reforms in the country since then, and the central institutions have been weak.
But this has been particularly strong after the 2006 elections and the difficult relationship between some of the country's new leaders – in particular Haris Silajdzic, the Muslim member of the country's tripartite presidency, and Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik.
Some 167 ministers for one country
On Wednesday, Mr Rehn called on Bosnia's leaders to start behaving responsibly.
"The leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina can either continue to quarrel and fall behind their neighbours, or get on with reform and move forward towards the EU," he told MEPs, stressing that this warning will also figure in the commission's progress report on Bosnia to be released on 5 November.
For her part, German christian democrat MEP Doris Pack, in charge of the dossier in the European Parliament, also blamed the Bosnian political class for an ongoing stalemate.
"The political class does not want to take any responsibility… Division along ethnic lines has gotten even worse… We need real political reform, rather than empty legislation," Ms Pack said.
"Around 167 ministers [currently working in Bosnia], with everything that goes with them, represent the biggest part of the [state] budget. The rivalry between two well known politicians and their supporters has fatal consequences," she warned.
France's EU minister, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, speaking on behalf of the current EU presidency, highlighted the fact that Bosnia was at a decisive crossroads.
"This country is at the crossroads between the European perspective that would bring it to EU accession, and a withdrawal based on nationalist rhetoric which is turned towards the past," he said.
Bosnia about to collapse?
Meanwhile, former international peace envoys to Bosnia have warned that the country is in danger to collapse and called on the world "to pay attention to Bosnia again."
"Today the country is in real danger of collapse," US ex-diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who was the chief architect of the Dayton peace deal, and Britain's Lord Paddy Ashdown, who was the international envoy in Bosnia between 2002-2006, wrote in an open letter on Wednesday.
Notably due to the "toxic interaction" between Mr Dodik and Mr Silajdzic, "the suspicion and fear that began the war in 1992 has been reinvigorated, and an unhealthy and destructive dynamic is now accelerating, with Bosniak and Croat nationalism on the rise," the diplomats warned.
"As in 1995, resolve and transatlantic unity are needed if we are not to sleepwalk into another crisis," they said in the letter, French news agency AFP reports.
"It's time to pay attention to Bosnia again, if we don't want things to get very nasty quickly. By now, we should all know the price of that," they said, deploring a "distracted international community."
Everything is not lost, the former peace envoys wrote. The bad path Sarajevo has taken can be reversed, "provided the EU wakes up [and] the new US administration gets engaged" by pushing for reforms and maintaining an effective presence of international troops.
