The Brussels Gathering Showed the True Face of the Coordination Mechanism: What Will We Do in the EU if BiH Loses its Statehood!?

By: Amina Čorbo Zećo

The Council of Ministers of BiH secretly adopted the coordination mechanism at a session on January 26, 2016. What it actually means in the relations between the European Union and BiH, we could see yesterday in Brussels. I just don't know if Denis Zvizdić, who is proud of this era of his political activity, has become aware of this cumbersome apparatus which is 'adorned' exclusively by blockades.

More than 100 people were in Brussels; this trip will cost one million KM. They left empty-handed, bringing back only what could be bought at Christmas sales. The truth is that Borjana Krišto and Oliver Varhelyi moved Zvizdić's 'coordination mechanism' to Brussels for reasons known to them. Krišto certainly wanted to show that cantons would play a key role, just as Milorad Dodik advocates the thesis that there is no path to the European Union without Republika Srpska. And it seems there is no path for us anywhere, because the numerous delegation from Brussels was anything but the state of BiH.

Media reports that all levels of government in BiH were represented in Brussels are incorrect, knowing that members of the BiH Presidency were not there.

Therefore, the coordination mechanism is completely wrongly set up, where 14 governments will have a say, all except the highest executive body of BiH, and that body is responsible for BiH's foreign policy, which definitely includes BiH's path to the EU.

The European Union demands from its member states, as well as countries that are on the path to becoming members, that all policies throughout the country are coordinated and have the same goal in the integration processes into the EU, and that they are effectively implemented. They are asking for what they themselves do not have, because Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, and France are increasingly opposed to enlargement and definitely do not speak the coordinated Brussels language.

How is it then possible that such a coordinated language is demanded from BiH, and in a mechanism where more than half of the 14 governments have diametrically opposed views and understandings of the existence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because, for example, Republika Srpska strives for secession, while cantons with a Croatian majority have their own rules of the game, and they are in no way directed towards the prosperity of BiH and its development into a modern European country.

Why then did the most numerous delegation travel to Brussels, and what was actually intended to be shown by this gathering, which some claim went great, that everyone spoke with one voice, if we know that today they have all reset to their initial positions. Everyone back to their own.

Because the coordination mechanism, as accepted, is just a further way to legally block BiH's progress towards the European Union and a model for further disempowering and dismantling our country.

It is therefore legitimate to ask what form of statehood, if any, will remain for Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would be admitted into the family of European states. And what does the EU mean to us if, by the final accession, if it ever happens, we no longer have the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina!

Because what we saw yesterday in Brussels were not state affairs, but a mockery of BiH's statehood, which we will pay one million marks for.

Perhaps Varhelyi, as a Hungarian, Viktor Orbán's man, Milorad Dodik's friend, aimed to bring a discordant orchestra of the (un)coordinated government of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Brussels, which has not even defined what it wants, let alone how to achieve it.

Such a picture certainly caused confusion among the representatives of the orderly EU countries, especially those who, for their own reasons, oppose enlargement. The picture they saw at the Second Political Forum will certainly convince them that they are absolutely right, because if the delegation of a state with approximately three million inhabitants is represented by more than 100 people at a meeting characterized as “high-level,” then any serious conversation with such a state is impossible.