Civic culture in Bosnia needs to change, it needs to lose its tolerance for any sort of corruption, said Lejla Ramic-Mesihovic, Executive Director of the Foreign Policy Initiative BH, an NGO analyzing Bosnia’s foreign policy.

“We are, for sure, part of the European culture. What distinguishes us from the EU are our unconventional habits. I believe most of them were treated in the EC Progress Report as anomalies but it is also fact that there is nothing else we could perceive as ours but this (European) culture,” Ramic-Mesihovic said.

“The EU is not teaching us anything we don’t already know. As long as we feel that the EU has to force us to remove corruption from our practice, we will fail to do so,” she said.

“We need a level of consciousness and civic culture which is intolerant to all types of corruption,” she said. “We are very used to corruption, especially minor cases of it. We have a particracy in place which is detrimental to Bosnia’s institutions. A country with weak institutions cannot carry the weight of being within the EU.” 

Ramic-Mesihovic also spoke about May 9, the Day of Europe, in commemoration of the 1950 Schuman Declaration which led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, and eventually, to the establishment of the EU.

“The largest and longest project, which is the EU, began with the Schuman Declaration. We see an incremental institutionalization of the EU and at the same time we see the spirit of the Schuman Declaration breached recently amid waves of populism (in Europe),” she said, but added that “fortunately, is seems that the Continent is finding the strength to overcome this trend.”