Marta Kos to N1: We won't talk to politicians with separatist aspirations

Commenting on the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of the ongoing political crisis and Dodik intensifying his separatist aspirations after he was sentenced for his defiance of an international peace envoy's orders, Kos said she would be personally happy once this country finally starts the negotiations on its entry into the European Union.

“We have been waiting for a long time for the situation to stabilise enough so that Bosnia and Herzegovina can meet its obligations and implement the reforms necessary to start negotiations, after it was granted candidate status – Slovenia has really contributed a lot to this”, she stressed.

“The current situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is tense, and Dodik is certainly the politician who is currently preventing the normalisation of the situation in BiH and preventing it from doing what is necessary”, she added.

Kos clarified that this means that a “politician with separatist aspirations, who is against European integration, does not respect the order established by the Dayton Agreement and claims rights that do not belong to him, of course, cannot contribute to ensuring BiH's European path.”

“We are trying to find a solution to bring Bosnia and Herzegovina from Dayton, which is currently still an agreement that ensures the organisation of the state, to Brussels. In short, from Dayton to Brussels, in a way that all the reforms that the candidates must implement are also implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Kos said, referring to the peace deal which ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war and established the country's constitutional order.

Asked what could be a solution to the situation, she responded that the solution is still sought for.

“We are currently still looking for a solution to ensure that the decision-making process is not so much based on ethnicity grounds, but rather that what is good for Bosnia and Herzegovina comes to the fore. BiH is among those countries - and even when looking separately at the Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska (the country's two semi-autonomous regions), even in the latter more than 50% of people support the European perspective”, she stressed.

Kos revealed that the intensive work is underway to ensure that negotiations can start as soon as possible, and reiterated that Dodik will not be among the collocutors to discuss the solutions.