Slovenian President Borut Pahor, who is attending a trilateral meeting with the presidents of Croatia and Austria on the Brijuni Islands, said he had launched an initiative for the European Union to give Bosnia and Herzegovina the candidate status without any conditions. He shared this initiative, he said, with friends from the EU.

“The EU would thus invest in peace, security, prosperity and the European perspective of BiH, and because of that first move, it would subsequently ask [BiH] to meet the conditions, as we did. To get BiH out of the vicious circle in which there is no progress or status, as in any other country in the Western Balkans. If we are thinking about accelerated negotiations with Ukraine, we should also think about this problem. We need to help BiH where we can. The EU can take the first step in good faith, show confidence so that we would have a territorially coherent BiH in the EU,” said Pahor.

"EU treba BiH dati kandidatski status bezuvjetno, bez pogovora, time EU investira u mir, sigurnost, perspektivu. Uvjete ispunjavati kasnije, dati priliku BiH da se izvuče iz začaranog kruga", inicijativa je predsjednika Slovenije @BorutPahor Više na – https://t.co/L7AUgRKFYV pic.twitter.com/dn6k0ItiXE

— TV N1 Sarajevo (@N1infoSA) June 3, 2022

Speaking about the war in Ukraine, he condemned Russia for attacking that sovereign country and said for the first time he was not convinced that a solution could be reached peacefully.

“Russia had no reason to attack neighbouring Ukraine,” he concluded.