Bosnian Croat lawmakers refused to attend a session of the lower house of one of Bosnia’s two semi-autonomous entities because the body recently adopted an election-related law without them.

Tuesday’s session of the House of Representatives of the Parliament of the Federation (FBiH) was dedicated to the challenges the entity is facing on Bosnia’s path toward EU membership.

“The Croat club in the FBiH House of Peoples will not attend this session, not because Croats are not committed to the European Union or NATO, but because Croats want to, in this way, send a clear message (…) that the Law on Electoral Units was passed without without a single vote from Croats,” said Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) lawmakers, Mladen Boskovic.

“This is why I ask of all of you and of our friends from Europe to understand that this is not our message against the European Community or NATO,” he said.

The Bosnian Croat lawmaker referred to a session on June 20 when a proposal on the Law on Constituencies and the Number of Mandates in the FBiH Parliament was adopted. The proposal was drafted by five parties who were trying to budge the country out of a deadlock which threatens the electoral process ahead of the 2018 general election.

The main Bosnian Croat party, the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ), objected the draft from the very beginning and refused to take part in the session when it was adopted, as well as in Tuesday’s session.

The problem with Bosnia’s Election Law stems from a ruling made in 2016 by the country’s Constitutional Court that declared the Election Law unconstitutional and ordered the Parliament to change it. At issue was the state Election Law provision dictating that cantons delegate at least one representative from each of the country’s three main ethnic groups to the FBiH House of Peoples.

Lawmakers never agreed on how to amend the law and that puts the forthcoming October election results at risk of being illegal and therefore not implementable. This would leave the country without a government.