Bosnia made progress on its EU path but then lost a lot of time because its leaders launched their campaigns for the 2018 general election early, said European Union MP Tanja Fajon after meeting with the head of the EU Delegation to Bosnia and lawmakers of the Federation, FBiH, one of Bosnia's two semi-autonomous regions.

“There was some progress, but I can say that Bosnia launched the pre-election campaign too early and lost precious time because of it,” Fajon said.

“I hope Bosnia will continue working on issues stated in the follow-up questions to the EC Questionnaire,” Fajon said.

Bosnia had formally applied for EU candidate status in February 2016 and was, as part of the process, to provide answers to 3,242 questions in a European Commission Questionnaire within six months. It took the country much longer to respond because deep political and ethnic divisions complicated the answers.

In February this year, Bosnia's senior officials handed over the answers to the Questionnaire to EC President Jean-Claude Juncker, after which the country expected the Commission's opinion to its EU membership application.

But the EC sent back a list of 655 follow-up questions, for the sake of clarifying and providing missing information regarding some of Bosnia’s answers in the original questionnaire.

“It is difficult to go forward without dialogue. The dialogue between Bosnia's Government and the European Commission must continue and be accelerated and involve more motivation,” Fajon said, adding that she would forward the messages from Bosnia to Brussels and advocate for EU expansion to include Bosnia.

She urged for Bosnia's political leaders to agree on changes to the country's Election Law, which was declared unconstitutional in 2016 and needs to be changed so the results of the October election can be implemented.

The meeting was also attended by EU Delegation Head Lars-Gunnar Wigemark and the the Presidents of the two houses in the Parliament in FBiH, Bosnia's semi-autonomous entity shared by Bosniaks and Croats, Edin Music and Lidija Bradara.

“We pointed out that we ourselves are sending an exaggeratedly bad picture of ourselves, which slows us down on our EU path,” Music, the President of the FBiH House of Representatives, said.

Bradara, who presides over the FBiH House of Peoples, agreed and expressed hope that Parliament will continue working as usual after the election period.