Bosnia and Herzegovina could be granted the candidate status for the membership in the European Union by the end of this week, according to media reports. The information comes as the scepticism among citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina towards the country's EU journey slightly grows, mostly in its Serb-majority Republika Srpska entity.

According to Bosnia's Directorate for EU Integration, the pessimism among the Bosnians regarding the country's EU membership increased in 2022 compared to 2021 (7%) and 2020 (2.5%).

“One third of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina (34.7 %) forecast BiH's entry in EU in no more than 10 years. In 2020 29% of the population had the same forecast, while in 2021 it was 40.6%,” according to a survey.

When it comes to the country's two entities, majority of those in the Bosniak-Croat shared Federation believes that the EU membership would strengthen the relations within the country, while majority of the surveyed people in Republika Srpska deems that the EU will not survive.

Today, when the country seem to be as close to the EU membership as ever, even the citizens of the Federation entity, more precisely those in the capital city of Sarajevo, show slight scepticism but also a hope the country would join the EU one day.

“We should have joined the EU in 1995, in November – that's it. This is a torture, a chaos, a shame for Europe and the world. I wanted us to join the EU thirty years ago, I absolutely want the same now too,” a Sarajevan told N1.

“I heard about a discussion on the candidate status, I think that is going to be yet another endless delay,” said another Sarajevo citizen.

Some citizens expressed the lack of trust in local politicians.

“We cannot get anything with these thieves. I have to trust in the EU path, but I am not in a hurry to get to Europe, we learned everything about the theft from them,” said a citizen.