If Bosnia Doesn't Want Europe, Europe Wants Bosnia

The application for entry into the European Union has been submitted in Brussels. To be clear, the initiative came from Europe, that is evident. The term "entry into the European Union" is incorrect. It is more accurate to say that Europe will enter BiH. It happened to us: If Bosnia doesn't want Europe, Europe wants Bosnia. Reforms must begin. Our political oligarchies had no other way out. And all these reforms will gradually degrade the enormous political power and unbearable political arbitrariness.

We started entering Europe a long time ago. In the midst of the war in BiH, a political gathering was held in Switzerland, in Zurich. A few leaders of the small MBO party were speaking at a forum for our refugees. In the middle of the speech, a man from the audience stood up and said: "I would like to say that you are the only party that keeps its promises. Before the first democratic elections, you constantly said: With us to Europe. With us to Europe. And here we are with you in Europe."

It will take time for BiH to obtain candidate status. All the countries around us received it in a period ranging from about twenty months to two years. It will take us at least five years for discussions about our accession. We have five thousand requests and tasks that we must fulfill to be able to join the European Union. And the largest part of these tasks concerns citizens and their individual rights. Therefore, we must harmonize our legislation with European standards and become a state governed by the rule of law.

A state that treats every inhabitant equally and protects them regardless of national or religious affiliation, regardless of origin, health status, and current social status. We will have to undertake reforms of public administration, reforms of the economic system, and settlement of property relations. And this will be the most difficult job, as for a whole century, there has only been wild appropriation and usurpation of others' property in every way.

Europe wants a single address for negotiations, meaning it wants BiH as a partner, not entities. Those who would divide BiH and negotiate about everything and anything will not get the opportunities they have had so far. Dreams of independent states will fade. Not a single door can be closed within the Union.

After submitting the application, our political opportunists promised to do everything to ensure that our youth seek their future in Bosnia and Herzegovina. People are not fleeing this country solely because of the poor economic situation they created. People have fled and are fleeing from hopelessness, which is their product. They are fleeing from injustices at every step, which they have established. They are fleeing from corruption, which has become a way of life in this country and the system by which all institutions function. They are fleeing from the social insensitivity of their leaders, which has created misery, a land of nepotism, corruption, and lawlessness.

Because, the European Union is, without a doubt, a place of the rule of law. Where there is justice, everything else can be lacking. Sarajevans remember when a kilo of sugar was distributed to ten families during the war, and everyone was satisfied and peaceful. There was solidarity and tolerance for everything and anything. Then they came, greedy and insatiable, and made a mess.

At one time, our refugees came to Europe fleeing persecutors. Today, they are mostly successful, educated, hardworking, and useful members of European Union countries. It turns out they were a good vanguard.

All these five thousand conditions mean that politicians will need to be stripped of the power and arbitrariness that have caused all the misfortune in BiH. This country will receive precise diagnoses of all its corruption diseases, which will need to be treated. By harmonizing laws and establishing human and civil rights, our leaders are being dethroned and becoming mere servants of the citizens. Thus, politics becomes ordinary work, and politicians become down-to-earth people, which they always were. Leaders from our neighborhood. By joining the European Union, their assets will become public and put under scrutiny. All their foreign accounts will be published and made available to the public.

But they will not surrender so easily. If they signed the application, they did not sign a capitulation. Bosnia and Herzegovina will be in Europe's waiting room for at least another five years. That is enough for them, too much for us.