Reforms without a state: How the Reform Agenda is turning into deception

Written for NAP: Prof. Dr. Hazim Bašić

Bosnia and Herzegovina faces the challenge of implementing a document presented as proof of seriousness, responsibility, and European maturity. The document was unavailable to the public, even to most state-level politicians, until the European Commission approved it.

The Reform Agenda, adopted by the Council of Ministers and blessed by Brussels, is presented as a roadmap towards a modern, functional, and competitive state. However, an examination of this extensive document, over 200 pages long, does not promise that the outlined goals will be achieved. The essence of the document indicates that reforms are conceived in a way that they will be implemented without strengthening the state that should carry them out. This suggests that the document was not written with the aim of genuine adaptation of the state for European integration, but rather to maintain the status quo and secure promised financial resources from the Growth Plan.

The State as an Intermediary, Not a Driver of Change

In the Reform Agenda, Bosnia and Herzegovina does not appear as a political community with clear reform authority, but rather as an administrative service, a channel through which European requirements, funds, and deadlines pass to lower levels of government. State institutions are not empowered to set binding standards, nor to sanction the non-implementation of reforms. Their role is reduced to coordination, reporting, and "harmonization," terms that have long become synonymous with evading responsibility in Bosnian practice.

Such an approach does not produce a functional state, but rather a state without political weight, where each level of government is autonomous enough to block, and none is strong enough to implement most of the planned reforms.

The Reform Agenda accepts the existing constitutional and political fragmentation not as a problem to be overcome, but as an unquestionable framework within which reforms are "adapted to reality." And a reality that does not change becomes destiny. When reform processes are designed in this manner, the result is a document that cannot change anything significant.

In this sense, the Agenda actually institutionalizes political irresponsibility. Entities and cantons remain key actors, while the state is left without instruments of governance. Reforms are thus not depoliticized, but will be implemented selectively, partially, and based on interests in practice.

Political-Legal Constellation: Why Implementation Will Stall

The greatest weakness of the Reform Agenda lies in its assumption that deep structural reforms can be implemented within a political model systematically designed to prevent them. Bosnia and Herzegovina today is a state of constant blockades, ethnic vetoes, and institutional paralysis. In the context of European integration, any serious reform requires either an organized and strong state or radical political consensus regarding the European path. The Agenda offers neither.

There are no coercive mechanisms, no clear hierarchy of decision-making, and certainly no political price for the almost certain obstructions. This means that the reform process will depend on the goodwill of those actors who have benefited from the flawed system until now. Expecting them to voluntarily relinquish power in favor of a functional state is not optimism but political naivety.

European Pragmatism and the Domestic Price

The European Commission accepted this document because it needs a functional framework for the implementation of the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans. In this regard, the Agenda is administratively satisfactory. But the price of this pragmatism is paid through the continuation of a policy where stability is prioritized over democracy, and manageability over civic equality.

Particularly concerning is the fact that the Reform Agenda is almost entirely detached from the issue of political equality of citizens and the implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. This sends a clear message that the European path is possible even without resolving the fundamental democratic deficit. In this way, the state is further delegitimized.

The Reform Agenda is replete with technical measures, indicators, and deadlines, but almost entirely avoids what is the essence of reforms – the redistribution of political and institutional power. The rule of law is reduced to more efficient procedures, the fight against corruption to better coordination, and economic reforms to fiscal discipline. But without political responsibility, all of this remains a simulation. A state that cannot enforce laws, sanction non-compliance with decisions, or ensure equal rights for citizens cannot implement a reform agenda either.

Either a State, or Another Document

In the coming months, the Reform Agenda will be defended with statistics, reports, and fulfilled "milestones." But the real question is not how many points have been formally realized, but whether Bosnia and Herzegovina is institutionally stronger or weaker afterwards. If the state remains weak, fragmented, and politically meaningless, then this Agenda, like many before it, will end up as a document of good intentions and poor outcomes.

It is finally time to state that there are no European reforms without a European state, without prior constitutional changes. And a European state is not born from compromises with dysfunctionality, but from a political decision to overcome it. Everything else is just another sophisticated version of self-deception.