At today’s European Council session, Zagreb "racked up another success in pushing its aggressive agenda" for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Berlin-based think-tank Democratization Policy Council has warned. They urged Germany to take over the EU leadership in the Western Balkans, to build a coalition to unilaterally introduce sanctions against Bosnian Serb-majority entity leadership over secession moves as well as the Croat major party HDZ BiH over the threat to prevent the October elections.
The think-tank said that Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic made success at the European Council session on Friday which will “almost certainly push European External Action Service's Angelina Eichhorst to restart the dangerous, ill-designed negotiations on so-called election law reform – declared closed after the failed last round last weekend.”
“This mirrors Croatia’s successful push at Monday’s Foreign Affairs Council (session), when Zagreb for the first time in half a decade managed to enter the term “equality of constituent peoples” in an official EU document (the Strategic Compass). Adding to this last week’s Council decision to change the decision-making mode in applying restrictive measures in BiH, this is the 3rd time in 8 days that the EU’s big member states, and liberal majority, surrendered the Union’s BiH policy to illiberal member states – Hungary and Croatia (on BiH), the DPC said, adding that there are two possible explanations to this “unprecedented performance, which hurts EU interests in BiH, threatens the stability of BiH and the Union's security interests in the Western Balkans, and encourages (Vladimir) Putin to open a second front in Europe i.e. in BiH.
One of the explanations, according to the DPC, is that illiberal member states’ agendas are tactically accommodated in order to maintain EU unity against Russia, and the second, some member state governments, starting with Berlin, don’t (yet?) have their act together.
They said this was “particularly worrying” given that the new German government declared the Western Balkans one of its top political priorities, stressed by foreign minister Annalena Baerbock's recent visit to the region.
In order to mitigate the damage, the organisation called on the German government to urgently seize EU leadership on the region and to recommit to the Merkel government’s 5/21 principles on election law reform.
These included: no further deepening of ethnic division; implementation of the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling in substance, not only in form; and that “legitimate ethnic representation” is not a concept in line with EU democratic values and standards.
“Germany should declare publicly that it will not vote for BiH candidate status if an electoral law reform deal is struck that violates those principles. Germany also needs to build a coalition of willing member states to unilaterally introduce sanctions against the RS leadership in order to prevent RS secession moves (under way or announced), and against the HDZ BiH leadership, should it follow through on its threat to prevent, in cooperation with Dodik, the organization of the 10/22 BiH elections. Germany should also return German troops to EUFOR as part of a push to permanently reinforce troops on the ground, including their stationing in Brcko,” said the DPC.
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