Premier Nezir Pivić: The ruling coalition is shifting its incompetence onto the cantons, I call on them to take responsibility

(Patria) - Premier of the Zenica-Doboj Canton Nezir Pivić stated that today's statements by the ruling coalition are "surprising" and that they "are trying to shift their incompetence onto others." He called on the ruling coalition "to take the responsibility that belongs to them, which is to make decisions at the level of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina that are strictly within the competence of the Council
of Ministers."

"The accusations by certain participants in today's press conference, who claim that the cantons conditioned support for the Growth Plan on the disbursement of funds from the FBiH budget, are absolutely unacceptable. No one ever mentioned that in that context, let alone that such conditioning existed," said Premier Pivić.

He reminded that the funds in the amount of 200 million for support to the cantons were planned on the expenditure side of the FBiH Budget for 2024, and they were also planned on the revenue side of the cantons, and this is an obligation that the FBiH Government must fulfill. He believes that this is not the only problem of the FBiH Government in terms of fulfilling budget obligations, and that there are other obligations they are unable to fulfill.

"I believe that the premature accusations against the cantonal premiers, who gave a conditionally positive opinion on the Growth Plan, i.e., pointed out facts later confirmed by the European Commission, are merely a maneuver to try to hide behind a bad solution because, apparently, Dodik and Čović imposed such a pace on them that they simply cannot justify to the public the Reform Plan they are supposed to accept," said the ZDC Premier.

He added that if the parties of the so-called Troika believe the reforms are good, they can do everything without the cantons, because the cantons do not need to participate in the decision-making mechanism.

"They decided to form a working group and establish such a decision-making method within that working group. If they believe there is room for negotiations to ensure that the decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH are respected throughout the entire territory, if they believe there is room for negotiations regarding the replacement of international judges with domestic judges at this moment, when unprecedented pressure was exerted on certain judges to leave the Constitutional Court before the end of their term, then I do not see what other goal there is than to obviously bring that state institution into question and its work, because we know that it bothers precisely the biggest obstructors of BiH's development and our European path, for whom the Constitutional Court is an obstacle to many ideas and plans, especially
unconstitutional laws passed in the RS entity. For us, in that sense, there are no negotiations when it comes to the position of the Constitutional Court," said Premier Pivić.

On the other hand, he added, "delaying the issue of abolishing the veto on entity-level decision-making, which is a demand of the European Commission, is also something that should not be debated, because that is not a European standard."

"I believe that in this way, the Troika together with partners Dodik and Čović should take responsibility and accept or not accept the Growth Plan as they agreed or did not agree, and not shift responsibility onto someone else who absolutely did not ask for the cantons to be part of the Working Group, nor is it necessary for them to give their consent in the sense that they can change both the composition of the working group and the method of decision-making, and ultimately it would not be the first time they send a Reform Plan that they had previously sent without consent. These accusations are truly unfounded, and I ask that everyone in the public space be responsible and perform their positions in accordance with the law, responsibly towards citizens and in the public interest," said ZDC Premier Nezir Pivić.