Lawmakers in Bosnia’s Serb-majority Republika Srpska (RS) entity will on Wednesday discuss the establishment of an agency for medicinal products and medical devices that would function separately from the state agency, this way launching the promised process of transfer of authority from the state to their entity.

The leader of the ruling party in the RS, Milorad Dodik, who currently serves as a member of the tripartite BiH presidency, has been talking about the return of a number of competencies from the state to the two entities in the country.

Essentially, those would primarily be competencies the Constitution brokered during peace negotiations in 1995 had given to the entities but which over time were transferred to the state by the state parliament.

Dodik’s opponents, as well as international interpreters of the law in Bosnia, say it is not possible for entities to take those competencies back unilaterally but Dodik has threatened with secession if it does not happen.

Such a process would then establish, for example, two taxation and judicial systems in the country and most of all, it would divide the army in two, which is vigorously objected by the country’s Bosniaks who see this as an attack on the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Dodik, however, has said that he will establish parallel institutions and ban state institutions from the territory of Republika Srpska.

The proposal lawmakers will discuss on Wednesday foresees that the headquarters of such an agency will be in the Bosnian Serb administrative centre, Banja Luka, that it will have its own laboratory and office for pharmacovigilance and that it will function according to laws of Republika Srpska, not the state.

The legal basis for this move would be the Constitution of Republika Srpska which prescribes that the health system is under the auspices of the entities.

The proposal argues that such an agency is necessary for the protection of the health of the citizens and foresees that its establishment would cost BAM 2.315.000 and that its work would require BAM 3.500.000.