Deprived of funding sources: Is the City of Sarajevo shutting down?

At the session of the City Council of the City of Sarajevo on September 24, among other things, the fact that the City Administration of Sarajevo has been left without funding will be discussed, after amendments to the Law on the Allocation of Public Revenues in the Federation of BiH, adopted in April and which has since entered into force, were adopted, writes the Patria News Agency.

Namely, the amendments to this law are unclear and imprecise and open up the possibility of different interpretations or application of the Law by the competent bodies in the FBiH Government and the KS Government, specifically in the part that should regulate the financing of the City of Sarajevo.

Practically immediately after the amendments to this law entered into force, the KS Government interpreted the adopted solution to mean that Sarajevo Canton no longer has an obligation to distribute funds from the single account of FBiH public revenues allocated to the KS budget to local self-governments in the KS.

The KS Government interpreted that, since the City of Sarajevo is also a unit of local self-government, the FBiH authorities and the City of Sarajevo must be treated equally as municipalities. In this regard, the KS Government announced the suspension of payments of the remaining funds planned in the KS budget for the current year, which are paid quarterly to the City of Sarajevo.

Due to all of this, insistence will be placed on the Federal Ministry of Finance and Minister Ante Krajina to adopt a special implementing regulation regarding this issue, the KS will be asked to allocate tranches as in the previous period, and finally, a request for the protection of the right to local self-government will be submitted to the Constitutional Court of FBiH.

- By adopting such a law, which effectively omits the City of Sarajevo as a unit of local self-government in the KS, not only is the City of Sarajevo deprived of the right to local self-government and original financing, but discrimination against only one local self-government has also been carried out – says our source.