Bosnia and Herzegovina's tripartite Presidency member Bakir Izetbegovic made a statement amid the Bosnian Presidency members' meeting with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying said that Bosnia needs a friend for its EU accession process. Merkel said that All the conditions in the EU accession process must be met.
“I would like to thank Germany for everything she did for Bosnia in the past 25 years. Thank you for accepting the refugees from Bosnia (during the Bosnian war 1992-1995), for the reforms and for the stabilisation of the situation in the country. I also asked Germany to help us with the Stabilisation and Accession Agreement with the EE, and you helped us there, as well,” Izetbegovic said.
According to Izetbegovic Bosnia submitted a credible EU membership application by answering the EU Commission's pre-accession Questionnaire where each EU candidate country answers detailed questions about the state. He said Bosnia can make progress when it comes to EU integration but that she needs a friend who understands her issues.
“Sometimes bad news can be heard from Bosnia, but we're on our way to EU. The economic indicators are solid. Our exports are the highest in the region, and the number of the unemployed is in decline,” Izetbegovic added. “What we need is to speed up the accession process and not let Bosnia slow down. I think we can get the EU candidate status by the end of 2018. We need peace and reforms. We have the means and the laws. With your help, I think we can have all four of these requirements.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel disclosed the topics of conversation during the meeting.
“We will discuss the challenges, the term for the election has been announced, these are important times, and we are here to clearly discuss these issues. We hope that the reform process in Bosnia will continue,” Merkel said. “It is necessary to change the Election Law, therefore we are quite concerned about this. The election term has been announced, and we will talk about how to make progress in this area.”
She said that Germany will support the EU perspective of all the countries of the Western Balkans and that they had previously been discussed this intensively. “All the conditions must be met. We will talk about the EU accession, it will be intense evening,” she said.
Bosnia's Constitutional Court issued a verdict two years ago, deleting several articles from the Election Law due to unequal representation of peoples in the House of Peoples of FBiH. Now the local leaders must agree on the amendments to the Law, before the general election which will be held in October 2018.
