Šehagić's Legal Victory: Court Rules – BiH Commission for Concessions Appointed Illegally!

(Patria) - The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has issued a ruling determining that the Joint Commission for Concessions was not legally elected, and therefore, is not legal.
Mensur Šehagić, a member of the Commission for Concessions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who filed a lawsuit with the Court of BiH due to the formation of a joint commission that is supposed to resolve the dispute between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the BiH entity of Republika Srpska initiated due to the awarding of concessions for the construction of hydroelectric power plants on the Drina River bypassing BiH institutions, confirmed this for Patria.

"As I claimed in my two lawsuits, the Commission for Concessions of BiH has neither legitimacy nor legality to make decisions. More precisely, the Joint Commission has no right to operate. The Court of BiH has finally ruled on this –” Šehagić said.



We remind you that the first lawsuit was also confirmed by the Court of BiH, but the Commission did not formally comply with the formal-legal decision, so Šehagić was forced to repeat the lawsuit.
The mandate of the members of the Commission for Concessions of BiH, which currently has four out of seven members, expired 14 years ago, and a new convocation needs to be appointed first.

However, this did not happen because the Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Staša Košarac (SNSD), canceled the public call.

Also, the problem is that seven members were appointed to the joint commission, six from the territory of Republika Srpska and only one from the Federation of BiH, and these include five Serbs and one Bosniak and one Croat each.

"The moment the commission member representing Brčko District retired, we could no longer work. Instead, we worked as a collegium," says Šehagić.

After the Court of BiH annulled the decision of the Commission for Concessions of BiH, which related to the appointment of the joint commission and returned the case for re-decision, Šehagić was re-appointed to that commission, even though he had notified them that he could not and did not participate in its work due to health reasons.

"The facts were determined incorrectly and the laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina were applied incorrectly, and the Court of BiH confirmed this," Šehagić points out.

Incidentally, the BiH Prosecutor's Office sent a notification last week requesting that the Joint Commission for Concessions of BiH explain why the partial decision of the Constitutional Court, which declared the construction of hydroelectric power plants controversial, was not implemented.

That partial decision was delivered to the Commission for Concessions of BiH on July 28, 2021, and the deadline for its execution expired on October 28, 2021, and on October 11, 2021, the Commission informed the Constitutional Court of BiH about its inability to take appropriate measures to execute the said decision.

(A.Č.Z.)