Nikšić tells Novalić: By trying to please the HDZ, you have endangered the miners in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina!

President of the SDP and former Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Nermin Nikšić sent an open letter to Fadil Novalić, Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the news agency Patria transmits in full

- I decided to address you in this way, because I believe that the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is in a very complex moment. I am well aware of the challenges you face daily, and until now I have tried to allow a democratic hundred days for you and your cabinet to work in as much peace as possible. Now that this period has expired, I am forced to address you in the form of a public letter regarding one of your decisions that could have serious consequences for all citizens of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This concerns the decision by which you withdrew the request for a constitutionality review of the Law on Waters of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (Official Gazette of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, number 6/2013), which I submitted while serving as Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I am certain that you made this decision due to political pressure from your coalition partner, the HDZ of Bosnia and Herzegovina, without considering all aspects of the problem.

Allow me, therefore, to briefly inform you of the motives and reasons that guided me to initiate this proceeding before the Constitutional Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These reasons are even more pronounced today than they were at the time of submitting the request.

During my mandate, in cooperation with the relevant ministry and the public company Elektroprivreda of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I invested a great deal of effort in revitalizing coal mines in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and improving the position of miners. In that period, we managed to increase miners' salaries, equalize the amount of the miners' hot meal allowance with that of EPBiH workers, and we intensified investments by EPBiH, which reached a volume ten times greater than in the previous 15 years.

Of course, all that was not enough, and we constantly sought new ways to secure funds for further modernization of mines and increasing the standard of miners and humanizing their work. I am convinced that the energy sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the strategic interests of this country and all its citizens, and without strong and stable mines, such a thing is not possible.

As you know, since 2009, there has been a federal Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on the Allocation and Direction of a Part of the Income of Enterprises Generated through the Use of Hydro-Accumulation Facilities, which obliges Elektroprivreda in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to allocate significant funds

(EP BiH has, from 2009 to the end of 2014, paid a total of 87,362,753.94 KM on this basis, while EP HZ HB for 2013 and 2014 paid a total of 41,644,200.00 KM) on account of flooded land, which is revenue for the municipalities on whose territory the accumulations are located. The Government and Assembly of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, completely ignoring that law, adopted their own almost identical regulation on June 28, 2013, by which they again imposed the identical obligation on EPBiH and EPZHB.

Such irresponsible behavior by the authorities of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton has put both companies in a financially very difficult situation, while at the same time directly affecting the reduction of possibilities for additional investments by EPBiH in the mines.

It is precisely for these reasons that I asked the Constitutional Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to declare the mentioned cantonal law unconstitutional, because there is not a single argument that can justify the electricity companies paying the same fee twice. It is clear to me, as it is to you, that these funds, which are allocated in this way, are mostly sovereignly managed by the HDZ through its municipal mayors and cantonal ministers, and it is interesting that there is no legal obligation for those municipalities, nor for the canton, to submit reports on what they have done with such large amounts of money.

That, however, must not be a reason for the stability of the energy sector to be called into question for the sake of the interests of the HDZ, or any other political party, and within that, to weaken the position of miners and mines.

Therefore, I ask you to analyze this situation once again and re-initiate the proceedings before the Constitutional Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because by doing so you will help not only the electricity companies and miners in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also the Government you lead to more easily overcome the problems that exist in the energy sector and which we are all obliged to solve together, states the letter from Nikšić.