The previous four years were marked by positive progress on Bosnia’s EU integration process, in spite of some obstructions, said Bosnia’s outgoing Croat Presidency member Dragan Covic.
“We’ve made progress regarding issues where we had some joint interests, but there were also obstructions and delays in the dynamics,” he said in an interview with Vecernji list daily. “I can only explain this by the lack of honesty by some when talking about our EU integration as the absolute priority.”
He was satisfied with the cooperation with other two Presidency members and the fact that they had no outvoting cases when making decisions in the previous mandate.
“Unfortunately, some disagreements were too big, like the revision of the lawsuit for genocide against Serbia, or the Constitutional Court’s decision on the Day of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity,” Covic noted and added that all those issues were instigated by the Bosniak Presidency member Bakir Izetbegovic.
Apart from raising tensions in the country, none of these activities were successful, he said.
Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency consists of three members, coming from three constituent peoples – a Bosniak, Serb and Croat member.
The country consists of two semi-autonomous entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) shared by Bosniaks and Croats, and the Republika Srpska (RS), mostly populated by Serbs.
In 2015, Bosniak Presidency member Bakir Izetbegovic filed a lawsuit before the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina claiming that the celebration of January 9 as the Day of the RS was unconstitutional. The Court agreed, but the ceremony marking the day still took place in the RS.
In 2017, Izetbegovic filed a request to the International Court of Justice to review its 2007 decision which cleared Serbia of charges that it committed genocide during the Bosnian war of 1992-1995.
The Court rejected Izetbegovic’s request saying that the decision was not made by the Presidency itself, but by only one of its members, which is against the Court’s rules.
Speaking about the talks on cooperation with other parties following the October general election, Covic said that his party, the nationalist Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH), had already reached an agreement with the ruling party from the RS entity, the centre-right Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) and that negotiations with Bosniak representatives are yet to come.
