European Union High Representative, Josep Borrell, was supposed to address Bosnia’s Parliament on Saturday, but it seems that this will not happen because, according to House of Representatives Deputy Chairman Denis Zvizdic, the main Bosnian Serb party in the country blocked his speech.
Borrell is expected to arrive in Sarajevo on Friday and meet with Bosnia’s three Presidency members and members of the Council of Ministers the next day.
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According to Zvizdic, he was also supposed to address the Parliament but MPs from the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), the ruling party in Bosnia’s semi-autonomous Republika Srpska (RS) entity, voted against it.
“This is another anti-European move by the SNSD,” Zvizdic wrote.
This means that if Borrell wants opposition MPs to hear what he has to say, additional meetings will have to be organised instead of just one.
Borrell was supposed to address the MPs on November 21 – the 25th anniversary of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the Bosnian war.
According to the Chairman of the House of Representatives Nebojsa Radmanovic, an SNSD member, the European Commission (EC) representative office in Sarajevo had decided to “dictate the pace” of the agenda but that it is not up to them.
“Mr. Borell is coming, top foreign representatives have visited before and I think they must have a reception in accordance with the protocol that is worthy of that function but it cannot be done the way the EC wants,” Radmanovic said.
“They think that we need to have a big gathering which we would organise while they would be the ones who would do the thinking,” he said. “They say what should be done and we do it and violate all the rules we have as well as the Canton Sarajevo COVID-19 measures in place,” Radmanovic said, arguing that this will not work.
