Bosnia must make the best use of the European Commission's recommendations in the upcoming period towards the fulfilling of the Copenhagen criteria, head of Bosnia's state government Denis Zvizdic said Wednesday in Brussels, in a meeting of the member states' permanent representatives' body, formally known as the Coreper II.

“We expected the European Commission would recognise in its recommendations the level of achieved reforms, especially over the past four-year period during this term of Bosnia's Council of Ministers, and that accordingly (the Commission's) Opinion would give a positive recommendation for the candidate status,” said Zvizdic, adding that this did not happen but that Bosnia must follow the guidelines that the Commission provided in the upcoming period.

Bosnia formally applied for EU membership in February 2016 and was to provide answers to 3,242 questions of the EC's Questionnaire within six months as a part of a regular procedure of obtaining the Commission's opinion on its possible candidate status.

It took the country a year to provide the initial 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. Those were supposed to be answered by September 2018. The deadline was missed and Bosnia Presidency Chairman submitted the final answers in early March 2019.

Although Bosnian officials expected the Commission to give a positive opinion on the membership application, the EU's principal executive body said on May 29 that the country still does not sufficiently meet the accession criteria set by the Copenhagen meeting of the European Council from 1993.

“Although dissatisfied, we must review the things from the right perspective and use the provided guidelines in the upcoming period in the best possible way. The European Commission's Opinion precisely addressed the key recommendations that Bosnia and Herzegovina has to implement towards the fulfilling of the Copenhagen criteria,” said Zvizdic in Wednesday's meeting.

He expressed hope that the EU member states would take into consideration all achieved results and send an encouraging message to the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina during this year.

Besides the member states’ permanent representatives, the meeting was also attended by EC's Director-General for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Christian Danielsson and EU Special Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina Lars-Gunnar Wigemark.