Robert Badinter, French jurist who declared SFRY's dissolution, has passed away

(Patria) - French jurist and politician Robert Badinter, former Minister of Justice who chaired the arbitration commission within the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia in 1991, passed away today at the age of 95, French media report.

Badinter, a lawyer, law professor at the Sorbonne, and President of the French Constitutional Council, headed the so-called Badinter Commission at the time of Yugoslavia's breakup. In December 1991, this commission issued an opinion stating that the SFRY was in the process of disintegration, based on which, on January 15, 1992, the member states of the European Economic Community (EEC) recognized the state independence of Croatia and Slovenia within their existing borders.

The Badinter Commission, established on August 27, 1991, and which issued its first opinion on December 29 of the same year, had five members.

In addition to the chairman Robert Badinter, then President of the French Constitutional Court, the commission included the presidents of the constitutional courts of Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium.

Throughout his long legal and political career, he advocated for the abolition of the death penalty in France, which was achieved in 1981.

A Jewish intellectual and minister in a socialist government, whose father died in a German concentration camp, Badinter was the target of numerous attacks from the French right, some of which were tinged with anti-Semitism.