State property expert Muharem Cero believes Bosnia’s Council of Ministers and the Presidency reacted inappropriately to the question of state property in Croatia and Serbia. He warned that the local authorities neglected this issue for too long and that their Tuesday reaction came too late.
“For too long we've waited for Bosnia’s institutional reaction to Croatia's unilateral decision of a quiet nationalisation of Bosnia's property with allegedly guaranteed Bosnia’s ownership rights. Bosnia is not treated in accordance with the Succession agreement but Croatia continuously treats Bosnia as a sui generis (Latin for ‘in a class by itself’) state, thus making Bosnia not equal to itself,” Cero said. “We’ve come to a position where, 20 years later, we can’t own our own property.”
Bosnia’s Government has on Tuesday asked the country's Attorney General Office to intensify efforts at protecting Bosnia's state property in Serbia and Croatia and the relevant Ministry to work harder on bilateral agreements that would regulate the issue.
Cero characterised the Government’s reaction as untimely and that it will have no effect.
“Croatia is not being treated as a subject of international law. It seems to me that Bosnia is not using its legal status and it doesn’t affirm its sovereignty. Bosnia is quietly entering the pre-election campaign and it’s leaving this issue to the next government to deal with,” Cero added.
He noted that Bosnia’s state property in Croatia and other neighbouring states is now in a ‘grey zone.’
“Bosnian property is used as a good opportunity and they are slowly diminishing Bosnia’s portfolio. It seems to me that we are entering a space where it is impossible to retrieve our property.”
Cero concluded that this issue has shown that Bosnia has no institutional capacity to protect its property.
On June 29, 2001, at Vienna’s Hofburg Palace, the successor states to Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (today’s Serbia) – signed the Agreement on Succession Issues which regulates, among other things, the state property of each of the successors.
