BiH Parliamentary Assembly House of Representatives members write to EU officials: What compromises were made in the responses to the Questionnaire

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - 17 members of the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly sent a letter to European officials; European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commissioner for Enlargement Johannes Hahn, Head of the EU Delegation and EU Special Representative Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, seeking an answer about "what specific compromises were made in the responses to the European Commission's Questionnaire that the Council of Ministers plans to send to Brussels as part of the country's European integration."

- Given that we are members of the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly, this information is necessary for us to assess the situation regarding the responses to the Questionnaire, bearing in mind that, according to the information we have, there has been a violation of the law and the Constitution of BiH - the parliamentarians state.

The letter states that during the Census, the procedure and conduct were monitored by the International Monitoring Team (IMO), which issued over twenty reports, concluding that the 2013 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings was conducted in accordance with international statistical standards.

The parliamentarians who sent the letter state that the Constitutional Court of BiH dismissed Mladen Bosić's appeal as an inadmissible request for a review of the constitutionality of the decision adopting the Unified Data Processing Program for the 2013 Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in BiH.

As the signatories of the letter state, the entities must respect the obligations imposed on them by the laws adopted by BiH institutions.

- Otherwise, there is a violation of the provisions of the Constitution of BiH.

The conduct of the Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics represents a violation of the provisions of Article 3b of the Constitution of BiH, as well as a violation of the principle of the rule of law from the Constitution of BiH.

The conduct in question by the Directorate for European Integration and the Collegium for Decision-Making and Finalization of Responses constitutes a direct violation of legal regulations adopted at the BiH level.

The signatories of the letter are members of the Independent Bloc, Democratic Front, A-SDA, BPS, SDP, and SBB.

We recall, the Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics used its own census results in the responses to the EC Questionnaire, which it published in December 2016, which are not recognized by any institution and which differ from the results published by the Agency for Statistics of BiH and which are internationally verified.

Attached to the letter is a document titled "Legal Analysis" which chronologically lists the sequence of events, from the adoption of the Law on the Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in BiH in 2013, through the implementation of the census in BiH, to recent information that unconstitutional census data from the RS entity were included in the Questionnaire, i.e., the responses to the Questionnaire.