European Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi has published his Joint statement with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina Elmedin Konakovic after their phone conversation on Sunday.

Commission Varhelyi said he had a constructive call with FM Konakovic.

“We clarified misunderstandings and agreed to continue working on the EU path of BiH”, Varhelyi wrote on X.

Read the entire Joint statement below.

“We have discussed today the recent draft UN resolution on Srebrenica. The previous statements by Commissioner Varhelyi are in full respect of the victims and have in no way questioned the facts concerning the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995.

The facts of the genocide in Srebrenica have been legally established by, among others, the International Court of Justice.

The Commissioner's statements clarified that the perpetrators bear full and sole responsibility for the crimes they committed. Any notion of collective guilt or collective responsibility of a whole nation is unacceptable and against internationally accepted norms.

The crimes committed shall never be forgotten to avoid that they are ever repeated against anyone. Reconciliation can only be built upon truth, peace, and justice.

There can be no tolerance for genocide denial, historical revisionism, and glorification of war criminals.”

To remind, Konakovic sent an open letter to the European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Oliver Varhelyi on May 17, 2024, regarding his statements about the UN Resolution on the Srebrenica genocide in which he said, among other things, that “stigmatizing the Serbian nation with collective guilt is not a viable choice” and that he “didn’t think that this contributes to get[ting] over the horrors of the Balkan wars.”