The High Representative of the international community in BiH, Christian Schmidt, sent letters to authorities of all ten cantons in Bosnia’s Federation (FBiH) entity, as well as to the FBiH and Brcko District governments, urging them to revise and harmonise laws with the decisions of the BiH Constitutional Court on state property.
“The FBiH Government will establish a working group to analyse existing laws and regulations at the FBiH level, and several cantons have informed the OHR that they will do the same. The High Representative reminds all recipients of the letters to respond as expected,” the Office of the High Representative (OHR) said in a statement for N1.
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N1 spoke to one of the recipients of the letters, the Prime Minister of the Una-Sana Canton (USK), Mustafa Ruznic, who said local authorities are working on resolving this matter and that a report is being prepared for the USK Assembly to discuss on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister of the Posavina Canton, Djuro Topic, also confirmed he received a letter from the OHR.
“Our Minister of Justice was at the OHR for consultations yesterday, and as far as I understand, everything has been clarified. Therefore, with our regulation, we are not taking action in terms of banning the registration of state property at lower levels of government. It is clear that these things need to be accelerated and regulated because it is in our interest to know who manages roads, water management facilities, forests, agricultural land, and resources that are public, but we must know who is responsible for their conditions”, Topic said.
The FBiH Prime Minister, Fadil Novalic, told N1 that the FBiH Government asked the ministries to review the laws and make changes in accordance with Schmidt's decision.
“We are very happy to do that because it goes towards strengthening the state. We ordered the ministries to pass those laws written in accordance with the necessary norms. A working group has been formed and the problem will be taken seriously,” he said.
In BiH, including its two semi-autonomous entities and the Brcko District, there are nearly 1,000 facilities on a state property list. Back in 2005, former High Representative Paddy Ashdown imposed a ban on the disposal of state property and, in 2012, the BiH Constitutional Court ruled that only the state-level government has a right to state property, while the BiH Parliament has the authority to regulate such issues.
Bosnia’s Republika Srpska (RS) entity passed its own property law in February, but the High Representative suspended it in April.
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