Left-centre parties in Bosnia have urged Croatia's government to halt the implementation of a law they said will legalise the confiscation of Bosnian property in Croatia which is worth hundreds of millions of Euros.

“At the same time, we request that Bosnia's Council of Ministers urgently informs all European Union institutions about the assault on the property of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens and that it initiates all legal measures to halt this robbery,” the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Our Party (Nasa Stranka) and the Democratic Front (DF) said in a joint press statement.

The issue arose when Croatia adopted a law on state property in May which allowed the country to rent out the numerous buildings built by Bosnian companies in Croatia during the Yugoslav era.

Bosnian companies own nearly 200 properties across Croatia’s coast, including hotels, ‘Energopetrol’ gas stations and business buildings.

The parties said that according to another controversial law, the Law on Investment Promotion, which Croatia recently adopted, all the Bosnian property in Croatia would be treated as Croatian property and should enable the country to rent it out for ten years without paying Bosnia anything.

“Such a law is directly breaching the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia and Annex G of the Yugoslav Agreement Succession Issues,” the parties said.

They added that they are particularly concerned “about the fact that the Law was adopted at a moment when Bosnia is expecting to win the first court cases regarding the return of these properties at the Court in Strasbourg.”

The parties said the goal of the law is to make the implementation of the expected Human Rights Court ruling impossible or more difficult.

“Such actions of the government of the Republic of Croatia are not in the spirit of good neighbourly relations,” the parties said.

They also called the “silence” of Bosnian officials on the matter “shameful,” especially the attempts by representatives from Bosnia's Croat Democratic Union (HDZ), the main Bosnian Croat ethnic-oriented party in the country, to justify the actions of the Croatian Government.

Nearly all the property Croatia owns in Bosnia has been returned, the parties said.

“It is due time for the Government of the Republic of Croatia to behave in the same way, as it is due time that those in power in Bosnia begin fighting for Bosnia's interests, instead of fighting for their personal interests or those of their parties,” the statement said.

“There is no place in modern Europe for such kind of robbery,” they added.