Bosnia's two key problems and challenges are the fear of reforms and political options that are declaratively committed to EU integration, while at the same time trying to block the country's NATO path, Deputy Speaker of BiH House of Representatives (HoR) Denis Zvizdic said Sunday in an interview with Fena news agency.

Asked whether the HoR had an adequate response to issues caused by the Covid-1 pandemic, Zvizdic said he believed the response by all the levels of government in the country was inadequate, untimely and inadequately structured towards the needs of the health sector and branches of the economy which were hit the most.

“At a time when human lives are at stake and most economic flows are slowed down or disrupted, leaving thousands of existential jobs lost, citizens expect governments and parliaments to show leadership with a clear vision and effective decisions, plans and measures, which, unfortunately, in the case of the Council of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, it was completely absent,” said Zvizdic.

He added that the work of the BiH Parliament was practically based on the engagement of individual MPs instead of the work of the BiH Council of Ministers (as the state-level government is called), which is a worrying fact.

“I have personally proposed several laws and sixteen initiatives, which, if ultimately adopted and implemented, will improve the health, economic, investment and security situation in BiH,” Zvizdic noted.

When it comes to Bosnia's Euro-Atlantic path, he said that most activities that were implemented in this or are planned for the next year are based on measurable and credible progress made by the previous government.

But the Deputy Speaker of BiH House of Representatives noted that the country is facing two key issues:

“The first is the non-acceptance of the reality that BiH is a united, democratic and European state, a society of equal constitutional peoples and citizens who are the bearers of political sovereignty, and that is why the fiction about the non-existent statehood or independence of BiH and the independence of its Republika Srpska (RS) entity is completely counterproductive and leads, above all, to the social and economic regression of the RS. As a consequence, we have a blockade of the work of institutions at the level of BiH in an effort to give primacy to the entities in relation to the state. The other problem is the fear of accepting the EU legal practice and the inevitable reforms in the area of the constitutional, political, judicial and economic system and the strengthening the rule of law. Without these reforms, there will be no progress on BiH's path to Euro-Atlantic integration, no access to European and other funds, no economic recovery and development, no new investments, and no new jobs. This is clear to everyone who wants to see BiH in the company of modern European countries in the future,” Zvizdic concluded in an interview with Fena.