Čović and Plenković Discuss BiH's European Perspective

ZAGREB, (Patria) - Chairman of the BiH Presidency Dragan Čović met in Zagreb with Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia Andrej Plenković and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia Marija Pejčinović-Burić.

The main topics of the meeting were the relations between the two countries, BiH's European perspective, and the position of the Croatian people. The necessity of dynamizing BiH's integration process in line with the newly adopted EU enlargement strategy, which pays special attention to BiH, was emphasized.

They highlighted that only through membership in the EU and NATO can BiH break away from the negative legacy of the past that burdens its functioning. The strategy is an important incentive and a great opportunity to undertake further structural reforms, which can only be achieved in BiH through the joint efforts of all its constituent peoples and other citizens, and the cooperation of their political representatives. 

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković added that BiH is a state of a specific structure composed of three constituent peoples - Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks, in which their full equality, along with others, represents the foundation of a common future.

It was concluded that the priority is to strongly accelerate the European integration process in order to normalize relations in BiH, restore reform momentum, and establish institutional equality for the Croatian people with the other two peoples.

Čović informed Plenković about the status of the issue of necessary amendments to the Election Law. It was clearly emphasized that Croats, as one of the three constituent peoples, bearers of constitutionality and power in BiH, must have guarantees that through the process of free and democratic elections, they will be able to elect their political representatives, and thereby directly empower them to represent them and, on their behalf, co-decide on all important issues together with the representatives of the other two peoples.

He presented a clear stance that this particularly applies to bodies of collective representation that clearly reflect the trinational constitution of BiH, and added that for the Croatian people in BiH, only those amendments to the electoral legislation that clearly define and establish the method of election to the BiH Presidency and the House of Peoples of the Parliament of the Federation of BiH in accordance with the principle of legitimate representation, as bodies that express the constitutionality, equality, and democratic political will of all three peoples, are acceptable. In this regard, all problems related to electoral legislation that burden relations in BiH and its movement towards the EU must be resolved in the spirit of the Dayton Peace Agreement, the BiH Constitution, and following the binding decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.

Plenković emphasized that the Republic of Croatia will remain permanently committed to the principles of the Dayton Peace Agreement, active support and promotion of BiH's Euro-Atlantic perspective, with which the Republic of Croatia wishes to continue building sincere friendly and good-neighborly relations, it was announced from the cabinet of the member of the BiH Presidency, Dragan Čović.