Schmidt also admits: The decisive thing is up to the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina

(Patria) - Christian Schmidt, the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Gabriel Escobar, the United States Special Envoy for the Western Balkans, spoke at Bled as part of the 17th Strategic Forum titled "Rule of Power or Power of Rules".

Escobar spoke about the overall relations in the Western Balkans.

“We must create an atmosphere where minorities feel represented, valued, integrated. That is a task not only for governments on the ground, civil society, political parties, the international community. Honestly, I believe that the success of our work in Kosovo with colleague Lajčák, from Dayton to last Saturday, all successes in the Western Balkans have come through the unity of the US and the European Union,” Escobar said.

On the other hand, Schmidt said that we have that old game of blaming, and as he claims, we talk about others in the sense of, as he puts it, you are responsible for things not moving forward, and he would like to change that in terms of political culture.

“We need people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as in other countries of the Western Balkans, to take matters into their own hands and decide what they will do. I would really make a distinction between political parties, those that have authority and those that want to get closer to the European Union. We need help, but people need our help, but the decisive thing is up to the people, the residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Accordingly, it is not healthy that after one generation after the conflict in the Western Balkans ended, we just sit and see nothing being done. We must have European integration,” Schmidt said.

A large part of the international community must understand that we are here only to support this part of Europe and not to govern it, Schmidt said.