The departure of foreign judges from Bosnia and Herzegovina's Constitutional Court is not on the agenda because the country needs to implement many reforms by then as well as meet a set of conditions important for progress on its European journey, the head of the EU Delegation in BiH, Johann Sattler, said.

Speaking in an interview with the Sarajevo-based Oslobodjenje daily, Sattler thus explicitly supported the position on the status of foreign judges in the country's Constitutional Court presented a day earlier at the UN Security Council by the international community's High Representative to BiH, Valentin Inzko, who said that the court's current structure was the key barrier to attacks on the country's constitutional order.

Under the provisions of the Dayton peace agreement, which put an end to the war in the country in 1995, the BiH Constitutional Court consists of two judges each from among the three main ethnic groups and three foreign judges appointed by the president of the European Court of Human Rights.

The ruling Serb and Croat parties in the country, the SNSD of Milorad Dodik and the HDZ BiH led by Dragan Covic, have together proposed changes to the law on the Constitutional Court to replace the three foreign judges with domestic ones.

They explained their motion with the need for Bosnia and Herzegovina to meet criteria for membership in the EU but Dodik has added that the foreign judges, together with two Bosniak judges, keep outvoting Serb and Croat judges.

Sattler confirmed that foreign judges should leave the Constitutional Court one day but that time for that had not come yet because the country was still far from EU membership.

The country should first obtain candidate status and launch negotiations. There are more important issues, including the reform of the judiciary, the impartiality of judges, and the like, said Sattler.

He noted that the main priority for the country currently was the reform of the judiciary, as underlined in the latest opinion of the European Commission. The reform includes measures to guarantee the impartiality of judges and prosecutors as well as of members of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, he said.

Eighty percent of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina are dissatisfied with the situation in the judiciary. Reforms are necessary and you do not implement them for the sake of foreigners but for the sake of citizens who do not want anyone to be above the law and who want trials to be held within a reasonable period of time, Sattler said.