The international community is not treating issues in Bosnia the way it should and it often deviates from its own policies when assessing the situation in the country, BiH tripartite Presidency members Sefik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komsic said at the Balkan Integration Forum 2021 in Podgorica.

Dzaferovic, the Bosniak Presidency member, said that he does not believe the United States and European Union have given up on the Balkans and that the “geostrategic configuration of the Western Balkans is completed.”

“I am quite convinced that there will be no creation of new states or redrawing of borders. These are ideas that will not happen. What remains is for us to build up our Euro-Atlantic path,” Dzaferovic said.

“The rule of law, the fight against corruption, individual rights, equal rights, that is the essence of the European Convention, and I think that is the way to go,” he said.

However, Dzaferovic argued that the EU is not engaged in the Western Balkans to the degree it should be, which is also the case for the US.

“The attitude of the international community towards BiH is incorrect. International interventionism is not as common as anywhere else in the world, it is an institutionalized part of the package according to which BiH functions. Without fulfilling the obligations of the international community, BiH can hardly function in the existing constitutional arrangement,” he said.

“The international community did not act as it should have,” Dzaferovic argued, adding that the Office of the High Representative in the country, which oversees the civilian implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, has started to “reduce its activities” and that this represents a bad signal for BiH.

This, he said, resulted in “retrograde forces” reemerging and gaining confidence that they can “realise their agendas which they could not achieve in war.”

Dzaferovic said the final goal of those forces is the violation of Bosnia’s territorial integrity and that “this will not happen.”

It is necessary to return to the obligations of the international community and the principle of the rule of law. We need to return to the framework in which BiH operates. If an official says that a decision of the Constitutional Court is unconstitutional, do you know what kind of blow that represents to the principles of the rule of law?” Dzaferovic said, referring to statements by the leadership in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) entity regarding certain BiH Constitutional Court rulings.

“BiH must be helped so that its institutions can function without boycotts and blockades. Our path is the path to the EU and NATO,” he stressed.

Komsic, the Bosnian Croat who chairs the Presidency currently, said that the “current state of the system of values” and the “everlasting conflict” can be overcome in the region just by “returning to the modern principles of democracy.” That is the principle that the individual is at the centre of both the administrative and social system, he argued.

Komsic was referring to the issue of electoral reform in BiH and criticised the international community for the way it approaches the issue.

“I am not sure that changes will take place in this way. There will be a new political conflict,” he said.

“The international community deviates from its basic, public policies that it advocates at every turn. These are primarily judgments of the European Court of Human Rights,” he said, referring to ECHR verdicts which found that Bosnia’s electoral system is discriminatory.

“We are not discussing anything in relation to values at all and how the country could progress towards EU standards, and everyone claims that this is the goal, and that is why I think that will be the reason for the failure of talks on electoral law reform,” he said.