Bosnia’s Foreign Minister Bisera Turkovic participated in one of the panels at the 17th Strategic Forum in Bled where she said that BiH citizens are desperate and the situation in the country is much worse than in 2000.

She recalled that compared to 22 years ago, when she was the BiH European Integration Minister and when the country was very interested in becoming part of the EU, Bosnia is facing many difficulties, today.

“Thessalonica offered us great hope. In 2008, research showed that 78 percent of the BiH population wanted to join the EU. We followed that desire and signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement in 2015, and applied for EU membership in 2016. Where are we today? It seems that we have not moved far and that the situation today is much worse than in 2000 or 2015. We have had a blockade of state institutions for eight months, things are just starting to move, but we’ll see how long it will last. We have the Russian influence that threatens to undermine all other hard-won achievements and the direction BiH was heading in order to become a functional state. As a result, we didn’t get the candidate status because we didn’t fulfil 14 EU prerequisites.”, Turkovic said.

Then she spoke about the problems of the Electoral Law and the (in)security of the Western Balkans.

She stated that the Electoral Law is a subject of dispute and that many judgments of the European Court of Human Rights have not been implemented.

My mother is Croatian, my father is Bosniak. What about us? In order to be elected, I have to decide whether I am a Bosniak or a Croat. Why can't I be a citizen of BiH? What about my Jewish friends or the Roma people? They are discriminated against. Are these the EU standards? Our chances of getting the candidate status, seem very weak and we are moving backwards. We have progressive forces fighting for BiH, but we also have strong opponents to those who see the future of BiH in Euro-Atlantic integration,” the Foreign Minister said.

In the end, she dealt with the question of the European Union.

“People are getting tired and desperate. They no longer see the future and are thinking of moving out of the country. We have those who don't care what the future holds. The question we ultimately come to is – is the EU really willing to help the Western Balkans, Bosnia and Herzegovina to become part of the EU family, or are we just there as part of peacekeeping and the appeasement policy? And from time to time we get some financial help. That is the image as we see it from BiH,” Turkovic concluded.