According to members of Bosnia’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) who met with members of the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday, MEPs who are well informed about the situation in BiH agree that the problem in the country is BiH Presidency member Milorad Dodik.

SDP lawmaker in the BiH Parliament, Sasa Magazinovic, together with the vice leader of the party, Vojin Mijatovic, and the founder of the Pokret Snaga Domovine NGO and former coordinator for integration of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO), Ahmed Husagic, discussed the political crisis in BiH with MEP Dietmar Koster from Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), as well as with other MEPs.

Magazinovic told N1 that MEPs have a lot of power and that the recent discussion on BiH in this institution showed that.

“Our goal is for them to have as much information as possible as a basis for their future activities, and what is encouraging from today's meeting is that these are people who, unlike some others in Brussels, do not give up on European values, ie do not promote solutions that they would not accept in their own countries,” he said, referring to the issue of electoral reform in BiH.

He said that the MEPs he spoke to see Dodik as the biggest problem in BiH.

“These are the people who are advocating sanctions against Dodik, and if they are not passed at the level of EU institutions, it is possible that the states will resort to various types of sanctions, as was announced by Germany's top officials,” he said.

Magazinovic noted that no such promises were made but argued that the very fact that the MEPs who know the situation in BiH well as calling out the true problems in the country contributes to having EU institutions speak about the issue with one voice.
He said the goal of the visit was to show MEPs that not all political parties in BiH are ethnicity-oriented and that the idea of a citizen-oriented system is well supported in the country.