Weekly Briefing, Vol. 33, No. 4 (BH), October 2020
Internal disfunction and foreign affairs: the cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s recognition of Kosovo and the Bosnia and Herzegovina’s aspiration toward the European Union membership
In the aftermath of Serbia and Kosovo agreement, signed in Washington on September 4th, questions were raised over Bosnia and Herzegovina’s complicated nature of relations with Kosovo, especially regarding the recognition of Kosovo and the current visa system. Besides this regional issue, the main focus of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the end of September and the beginning of October was aimed at country’s candidacy for membership in the European Union. Both of these cases once again revealed just how deeply dysfunctional the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina is, rendering it incapable of dealing with the world around it. In both cases, it was disfunction, rather then any kind of policy making, that dictated the course of development of events, which, again in both cases, will significantly affect Bosnia and Herzegovina’s future.
Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina: Recognition of Kosovo’s independency and the current visa system
In the external relations of Bosnia and Herzegovina briefing for September, titled “Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo”, we made the attempt to describe the more or less viable link between the complicated nature of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the recent developments regarding the relations between Serbia and Kosovo. The inability of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s leadership to reach a consensus over anything regarding Kosovo followed the results of the September meeting between President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić and Prime-minister of Kosovo Abdullah Hoti into the following month. Little less than two weeks after the “historic” meeting at the White House, the Serb, Bosnian and Croat members of the Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Presidency, namely Milorad Dodik, Šefik Džaferović and Željko Komšić, met in order to discuss Bosnia and Herzegovina’s policy regarding the official recognition of Kosovo’s independency. Results of the meeting was all but unexpected. Unsurprisingly, Komšić, who called for the meeting, alongside with Džaferović voted for allowing Bosnia and Herzegovina to officially support Kosovo’s independence, while Dodik voted against. As Komšić announced after this first round of voting, there will be another voting on the issue within the Presidency, after which Dodik, if the results end up being the same, can either go along with the decision, or can activate the special clause of the Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitution which allows him to contest the Presidency’s decision if he declares “a Presidency Decision to be destructive of a vital interest of the Entity from the territory from which he was elected” (Bosnia and Herzegovina Constitution, Article 5/2/d). Since all involved parties all well aware of each other’s differences regarding more or less everything that has to do with Bosnia and Herzegovina, both Komšić and Dodik, after the mentioned meeting, coldly predicted and announced, respectively, that after the second voting Dodik will proclaim the Presidency decision to be precisely how the constitution allows him to defined it. This prolongation will continue to make Bosnia and Herzegovina, not counting Serbia, the only country in the region which still does not recognize the independence of Kosovo.
This political issue also has direct practical consequences. Due to the inability of Bosnia and Herzegovina to agree on recognition of Kosovo, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina still have a compacted visa system, which prevents the flow of people and significantly hinders the development of trade (from which, paradoxically, Republika Srpska’s companies suffer the most). To make things even worse, even to obtain a visa physically is not an easy thing to do. Since Kosovo has no embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s citizens first must travel either to Zagreb (Croatia) or Tirana (Albania) to obtain their visa, making the process itself slow and expensive. While citizens of Kosovo do have the option to visit an Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in their own country, in order to obtain a visa, they still have to get a special permission form the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which significantly prolongs the process. Besides trade, the current situation also significantly hinders cooperation attempts between Bosnia and Herzegovina’s and Kosovo’s various institutions, including universities, theaters, sports organizations, and much to often makes the private contacts between individuals difficult or even impossible.
The European Union and Bosnia and Herzegovina: on the road of becoming an official member candidate
On September 30th, members of the Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Presidency, Šefik Džaferović, Željko Komšić and Milorad Dodik, met in Brussels with the European Union Enlargement and Neighborhood Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi, the European Parliament President David Sassoli and the European Union High Representative Josep Borrell to discuss progress Bosnia and Herzegovina made regarding its aspirations to become a European Union member state. After the meetings mentioned above, all the three Presidency members showed satisfaction, emphasizing the positive steps forward regarding the fourteen requirement points set by the European Union in May 2019 and regarding the announcement of the new financial package of help aimed at Bosnia and Herzegovina and the rest of the countries of the Western Balkans. The statements of all the three members of the Presidency also supported a thesis that Bosnia and Herzegovina can reach a “membership candidacy status” during the year 2021, if the country continues with the reforms requested by the European Union. However, as many of the analysts and journalists quickly noted, the timeframe proposed by the member of the Presidency is much too short to be realistic and that the “if” is much larger that the three politicians present it to be.
Main reason for skepticism lie in the simple fact that up until now Bosnia and Herzegovina made very little progress in fulfilling the requirements for reaching the candidacy status already set by the European Union in May 2019. The so-called “fourteen points”, generally speaking, refer to the various enhancements, amendments and adjustment of the practices in the fields of democracy and functioning of the institutions, rule of law, basic laws and the reform of the public governance. Among others, these requirements include the establishment of a Supreme Court at the Bosnia and Herzegovina level, reform of the Constitutional Court, which should also address the issue of foreign judges, various amendments to the election law, which include the changes which would allow members of other nations, aside only “constituent” ones (Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs) to run the Presidency and the House of Peoples, the abolition or reduction of entity and national vetoes, take steps to improve an environment conducive to reconciliation in order to overcome the legacy of war, general depoliticization and restructuring of public enterprises, ensuring transparency of the privatization process, etc. Since these “fourteen points” were defined for the first time one and a half year ago, Bosnia and Herzegovina only managed to partially fulfill three of them, while the fulfillment of the rest has barely even started. One of the significant problems regarding the fulfillment of the European Requirements lies in the fact that they call for some more or less significant constitutional adjustments.
Although the nature of the problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s slow progress could be followed ever since the requirements were set, and could have been clearly observed at the end of September, the scope of the problem, as well as its public and even political acknowledgement of the depth of it, occurred only after the European Commission published the 2020 report on the Western Balkans on October 6th, in which Bosnia and Herzegovina was simply described as a politically blocked country, which made no observable progress in the reform of public administration Reform and little to no progress in the reform of the judiciary, struggle against corruption or fundamental rights of minorities. The European Commission’s report, in which Bosnia and Herzegovina was not described nearly as positive as Džaferović, Komšić and Dodik wanted everyone to believe, clearly hinted that it is highly unlikely that the Bosnia and Herzegovina will reach a “membership candidacy status” in the short time the there politicians proposed.
Conclusion
The two foreign affairs issues Bosnia and Herzegovina was facing in the past few months, described in this briefing, show once more how the extent of the internal political “blockage” can affect the country, if not necessary in its moving forward, then at least in making decisions or even the simplest of reforms. The core of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s diplomatic lockdown with Kosovo does not lie in some well defined policy, what ever the policy is, but in the sheer inability to make any kind of policy on such matter at all. The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s “aspirations” toward the European Union is very similar in nature. While on one hand, Bosnia and Herzegovina appears to strive toward the “European” standards regarding politics, administration, judiciary systems, ethical premises, etc., which no doubt sound appealing when they are painted as goals by country’s various politicians, the country does nothing or “nearly” nothing when it comes to actually physically moving toward such goals. Both of these cases continue to show that Bosnia and Herzegovina needs core changes in order to move forward with anything. This is also one of the reasons why so many of the European Union’s “fourteen points” called for constitutional amendments in such early stages of negotiations for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s candidacy.