While 'Trojka' Celebrates a Promise, Brussels Clearly States - Dodik and Schmidt's Actions Have Moved Us Away from the EU Path!

By: Amina Čorbo-Zećo

After the Commission assesses that Bosnia and Herzegovina has achieved the necessary degree of alignment with the membership criteria and has fulfilled the 14 key priorities, the Commission will recommend the opening of EU accession negotiations.

Based on the conclusions of the Council of the European Union from December 2019, the Commission focuses its annual reports on the implementation of laws in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the 14 key priorities.

These are two sentences from the Report based on which a wave of celebration (!?) was initiated. However, BiH did not get the green light to open negotiations (as Ukraine and Moldova clearly did), and they actually wanted to enable government representatives to celebrate with such a Report. Thus, Peđa Kojović says – “A great day for BiH. We want, we can, we know”.

And it is neither a great day for BiH, nor do they want, nor can, nor do they know. Here's why!

“Likewise, we note that the entity of Rs has adopted a series of unconstitutional laws,” is one of the key sentences of Ursula von der Leyen, which the celebrants in BiH did not refer to.

Because they neither know nor can stop Milorad Dodik from ceasing to adopt unconstitutional laws, even though they have not succeeded in doing so so far. Their compromise policies with HDZ and SNSD in the state government have not been properly assessed, but this report has left them room to continue to act and possibly make progress.

“We have adopted our 2023 Enlargement Package, which recommends opening negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, granting candidate status to Georgia, and opening accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, WHEN the necessary degree of alignment is achieved,” the European Commission states.

Only an illiterate person cannot read this, and what the authorities are concealing is that Schmidt's (Christian Schmidt, High Representative in BiH) impositions after the elections, on election night, have moved BiH away from progress, because, as seen in Brussels, they have led to LEGAL UNCERTAINTY.

Of course, the Report is also full of difficult issues for which there are no solutions, such as state property, judiciary, Law on Courts..., and it is explicitly stated that there has been no progress in the fight against corruption in the past year. The authorities are concealing all of this, as if no one in BiH knows how to read.

I do not expect the EU Delegation in BiH to admit that the Report is far from good, because this is also a defeat for Johann Sattler, as he directly led this process with Dragan Čović, Milorad Dodik, and the Trojka.

Instead of helping with reforms on the EU path as the representative of Brussels in BiH, Sattler, along with Ambassador Michael Murphy, wrote a 'directive' to the FBiH entity government on the need to privatize the airport. Clearly, the needs of those hiding behind Sattler and Murphy were more important than the EU path, and we did not have an adequate reaction from the controllers of BiH's European path even to the Law on the HJPC, which was bizarrely adopted.

Sattler carried out tasks on behalf of the EU, and it can be clearly concluded why we are not in a position to get a better - higher status. If the Report is truly read and taken literally, the euphoria will disappear!

The best assessment of the work of the state government, which was supposed to be reformist, is the fact that Moldova is ahead of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the first time since Dayton when it comes to European integration.

And we could view the BiH Progress Report as a weather forecast – if you don't buy an umbrella, you'll get wet when it rains!