The Sarajevo City Council on Wednesday postponed a vote until its next session on a document that would declare Croatian President Zoran Milanovic persona non grata in the city, adding that the postponement was made to fine-tune the declaration.

The adoption of the declaration was proposed by councillor Toni Vukadin of the People and Justice party.

Today he said his move was prompted by the fact that nobody in Bosnia and Herzegovina had institutionally responded to Milanovic's insulting statements on BiH, so he concluded that at least the Sarajevo City Council should.

“I personally think no one should have to suffer Zoran Milanovic's behaviour and insults,” he said, adding that the Croatian president has dared insult BiH and humiliate its citizens for too long.

Vukadin's draft declaration says that Milanovic's statements harm Croatia-BiH relations and that his behaviour is inappropriate for the president of a European state.

The document says that Sarajevo is open to all people of goodwill, but not those who insult and do harm. The City Council would ask Milanovic to change his behaviour and he would be persona non grata until he did. If he were to come to the city, no city administration official would meet with him.

Councillor Adi Skaljic of Our Party remarked that the declaration did not state exactly which statements by Milanovic it condemned.

A number of his statements over the past year have been condemned, notably that “first soap and then perfume” is needed in BiH. He was commenting on demands to establish BiH as a civic state, saying that at the moment it was a distant dream.

Commenting on the situation in BiH in recent months, Milanovic said he would like to see what would happen to 2,000 Serbs if they decided to protest in Sarajevo, referring to protests held in July outside the Office of the High Representative due to announcements of electoral law changes. He called the protesters “incited unitarists.”

In July 2021, Milanovic said he would not go to Sarajevo until the problem caused by the election of Zeljko Komsic as the Croat member of the BiH Presidency was solved.