Bosnia and Herzegovina authorities keep ignoring the Constitutional Court rulings they don't like, for which no one has suffered any consequences, although it carries up to five years in jail, and with this approach BiH cannot count on EU membership, representatives of the Court and the EU Delegation said on Tuesday.

Many decisions, notably those which protect constitutionality and have legal and political consequences, have not been implemented for years, Constitutional Court president Valerija Galic told the press in Sarajevo.

The Court, established under the Dayton peace agreement, has two Croatian, two Serb and two Bosniak judges as well as three foreign judges appointed by the president of the European Court of Human Rights. The terms of the foreign judges should end with the adoption of a new law on the Constitutional Court, but there has been no political consensus on it in BiH yet.

That is the excuse the Serb entity's authorities have been using not to recognise and honour the Court's rulings, notably those on the constitutionality of entity decisions and laws.

The Serb entity's authorities insist that state-owned assets should belong to BiH's two entities, while the Constitutional Court ruled that they belong to the state and that lower levels of government cannot dispose of them until the state parliament adopts a law regulating the matter.

Galic said at least 16 rulings on the constitutionality of decisions or laws were contentious, including five that have not been implemented, while in the remaining cases the Constitutional Court intervened by putting the contentious decisions and laws out of force.

The BiH penal code envisages between six months and five years in prison for failure to comply with Constitutional Court rulings, but no one has been either indicted or sentenced to date.

The Court has established that there are 98 cases in which its rulings have not been complied with, including 24 reported to the Prosecutor's Office, but prosecutors claim they could not establish that a crime was committed, Galić said. “We must have a serious discussion on that.”

The head of the EU Delegation to BiH, Johann Sattler, said that honouring Constitutional Court rulings was required for progress in EU integration and that it was one of the 14 reform priorities defined for BiH by the European Commission.

In every democracy, failure to honour Constitutional Court rulings has deep repercussions as it means lawlessness, he said, adding that it is not just a technical issue, but also one with deep political implications.