Bosnia's Central Election Commission (CIK BiH) and the Council of Europe's delegation headed by the Senior Legal Officer Frederik Sundberg, discussed the implementation of the Sejdic-Finci verdict and changes to the Constitution and State election law, on Wednesday.

“We discussed the forthcoming measures and activities aimed at eliminating discriminatory provisions from the Constitution and the State election law in line with the orders of the European Court of Human Rights, which were repeated in a series of verdicts in the Sejdic-Finci vs Bosnia case series,” the CIK said.

In 2009, the Roma representative Dervo Sejdic and former head of the Jewish Community, Jakob Finci, sued Bosnia for its discriminatory Constitution barring them – as they are neither Bosniaks, Croats or Serbs – from running for Presidency. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in favour of Sejdic and Finci, saying the state is discriminating against them as a Roma and a Jew.

Bosnia has, however, never managed to fix this issue because the ethnic-oriented parties prefer to keep it the way it is: that Serbs living in the Serb-dominated part of the country, Republika Srpska (RS), elect the Serb member of the country’s tripartite Presidency and that the other two members are elected by people living in the other half of the country which Bosniaks and Croats share, the Federation (FBiH).

The two delegations concluded that some sections of the State election law and the Constitution are discriminatory.