Bosnia and Herzegovina risks losing its delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe!

(Patria) - The Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina was warned today that it has only two more days to submit the names of its delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) - or risk having no Bosnian members in the Assembly for the entire year 2019!, reports the Patria agency. This is one of the few European institutions where BiH is an equal member alongside other EU countries.

Tiny Kox (Netherlands, UEL) and Serhiy Sobolev (Ukraine, EPP/CD), PACE rapporteurs for the monitoring of Bosnia and Herzegovina, wrote today to the chairs of both houses of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina expressing concern about the "high level" of possibility "that we miss the legal deadline, which is midnight on 6 April 2019. According to PACE rules, the Parliament has six months from the date of the election to submit the names of the new delegation. Bosnia and Herzegovina, as one of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, has the right to send a delegation of ten members to the Assembly, but since January 2019 these seats have been vacant. The old composition of the Delegation is not allowed to serve in a technical capacity.

Although understanding was expressed from this European institution in the context of the fact that negotiations on forming a government at the state level affect the appointment of the Bosnian parliamentary delegation, they emphasized that "the absence of the Bosnian parliamentary delegation in the Assembly is a very bad signal about BiH's ability to fulfill its obligations in the areas of democracy, the rule of law and human rights."

The exclusion of the BiH delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe would be considered an international scandal, Patria reports.