Bosnia's candidate status now depends on the European Union (EU), head of the government Denis Zvizdic said on Monday after he confirmed that the country met the last condition and answered the questions from the European Commission's (EC) Questionnaire.

“The time of obtaining the candidate status depends on our friends in the EU. I hope they will get the importance of urgent approval of the (candidate) status and putting Bosnia and Herzegovina back on the track that leads to the European Union. That would be the best and most effective message for citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Zvizdic told reporters in Sarajevo.

Bosnia's state ministers composing the state government or, officially, the Council of Ministers, unanimously adopted on Sunday the answers to a set of questions the European Commission sent last year in order to review the country's application for the EU membership.

Bosnia formally applied for the membership in February 2016 and was to provide answers to the 3,242 questions of the EC's Questionnaire within six months.

However, it took the country a year to provide the answers because of internal disagreements that stem from deep political and ethnic divisions.

But once the answers were submitted, Brussels sent another 655 follow-up questions that should clarify certain ambiguities. Although the answers were supposed to be sent by September 2018 the authorities prepared them only now.

According to Zvizdic, the country made tangible progress towards the Union over the past four years.

“We adopted all strategies that we waited on for many years. Prior to the appointment of this current composition of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the European process was in a stalemate for eight years. Now those blockages have been overcome,” said the Council of Ministers Chairman, adding that the process could have been even faster if there was more political will.

The post-election government formation process has to be completed as soon as possible so that new authorities can start dealing with reforms, EU's formal representative in Bosnia Lars-Gunnar Wigemark said on Monday.

According to him, this year is crucial for Bosnia as the European Commission is preparing the opinion on the country's membership application.

Wigemark hopes the political stakeholders will finalise the talks on authority formation as soon as possible, to start dealing with main tasks.

“The first one is to accelerate the European integration process and start carrying out the European Commission's recommendations, while the second one will be continuing the reform (implementation),” he was quoted as saying.