Bosnia to inform UN that Croatia is breaching 2004 Agreement on Succession

At its first session held after the inauguration, The Bosniak, Serb and Croat members of the Presidency decided on Wednesday also to ask Zagreb to respect the international treaty and return Bosnia’s pre-war property located in Croatia.

An agreement on how property should be distributed came into force in 2004, but since then, very few cases involving Bosnia’s property in Croatia - mostly gas stations and hotels on the Adriatic coast - have been resolved because the two countries never signed a bilateral contract on how exactly to implement that agreement.

Most of the property remains neglected, and some of the buildings have meanwhile turned into ruins.

The Croatian Parliament adopted end of May a new law that enables Croatia to rent out those properties, but Bosnian experts fear that this could lead to Bosnia losing them for good.

Bosnia’s three Presidency members, Bosniak Sefik Dzaferovic, Bosnian Serb Milorad Dodik and Bosnian Croat Zeljko Komsic, also ordered on Wednesday the Foreign Ministry to notify the United Nations Secretary General, the depository for the Agreement on Succession Issues, of Croatia’s breach.

They ordered the Government to inform them every six months about what actions have and are being taken to protect the property and instructed Bosnia’s Ombudsman to explore the option of challenging the legality of Croatia’s new Law on state property at Croatia’s Constitutional Court.