Sarajevo Archbishop Vinko Puljic said that he finds Bosnian Constitutional Court's ruling, according to which the farmland is state-owned and not the property of the entities, be very important for many Croats who were forced to leave their pre-war homes in the early 1990s.

The ruling recently passed by the Constitutional Court actually prevents the legalisation of injustice inflicted on local Croats during the war, the Catholic Church leader in Bosnia said in an interview with the country's Catholic news agency (KTA), published on Thursday.

The ruling removed the peril that stems from legislation adopted by the Serb-majority entity's parliament, Republika Srpska (RS), which says that the Croat refugees from the areas that are now part of RS, could be dispossessed of their farmland, according to Puljic.

The Constitutional Court's ruling sparked strong reactions and criticism in the Serb-majority region and prompted its leadership to insist that the law on the State Constitutional Court be amended to remove foreign judges sitting there. Until that is done, the Serb representatives will not take part in the decision-making process at the state level, the RS parliament decided on Monday. 

Had the RS law (on farmland) remained in force, it would have made the situation worse, enabling those who are not landowners to become proprietors without any legal ground, said Puljic.

He underscored that the implementation of the entity farmland bill would have completed ethnic cleansing.

The cardinal also slammed Bosnian Croat politicians for caring only for Croats living in areas mainly populated by that ethnic group.

The RS’ demands towards the adoption of a new law on Bosnia's Constitutional Court, which would expel the foreign judges from that institution, have also got the support of Dragan Covic, the leader of the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH), the strongest Croat party in Bosnia.