DF on fiasco in Paris: Incompetent government wasted millions of EUR for infrastructure

Democratic Front (DF) issued a press release about a fiasco of BH representatives at the recent summit of leaders of Western Balkans that took place in Paris. DF say that out of 150 million of funding allocated for infrastructure projects, BiH will receive zero.

- The reason is unpreparedness of Council of Ministers for the summit which for its main agenda item had investments to the energy and transport sectors. The leading coalition acted on impulse last year when it dismissed the minister of communications and transport who was doing an excellent job and had great results, only to leave his seat empty for more than 6 months. The result of this nearsighted and irrational politics: half a year wasted, incomplete transportation strategy that was one of the conditions for funding grants, and missed grants are measured by tens of millions EUR which have been redirected to the neighboring countries!

In July 2015, before the Vienna summit, both houses of BH Parliamentary assembly adopted text of Provisional Transport Policy prepared and submitted by Ministry of Communications and Transport of BiH then headed by Slavko Matanovic. That was the fourth attempt at adopting the said policy!

As a reward for the adopted transport policy, EU accepted to finance certain projects – bridges on Sava in Svilaj and Gradiska estimated – with a grant of 28 million EUR. The grant, however, came with a remark that the state transport strategy, action plans and a set of 'soft measures' must be adopted by the next summit in Paris, so that EU funds for this purpose could remain available in the following year.

Meetings were held already in October with representatives of British embassy which showed readiness to finance a team of consultants to work on drafting a text of Strategy document in collaboration with the entity ministries and Brcko District. Additionally, meetings took place at the operational level of ministries with the embassy representatives, as well as representatives of EU Delegation in BiH that closely watched development of Transport policy, subsequently the Strategy. The result of those efforts was a meeting with the UK ambassador Mr. Fergusson on 11 November 2015 when terms of cooperation were defined and preparations for start of concrete work.

However, as a 'new parliamentary majority' was created, minister Matanovic was dismissed on 10 December 2015. 6 months passed till a new minister was appointed, partly due to judicial affair of the candidate for the position. During those 6 months there was no work on the Strategy document, and everybody in the Council of Ministers knew well that the Strategy is the condition for obtaining EU funds.

When we add to the all abovementioned that BiH refused to sign the adopted SSP; that 'coordination mechanism' is still non-existent; that there is no solution for elections in Mostar, which is also one of the conditions for considering BH application for EU membership – we can only conclude that the leading coalition is not competent to run this country and that it continues making this country an obscure place, while the rest of the region is rapidly getting closer to the EU membership, of which they already enjoy benefits in form of funding for infrastructure and energy projects, Democratic Front said in their press release.