Republika Srpska Prime Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic has told SRNA that the reason BiH did not sign the Transport Community Treaty in Trieste is not Srpska, but the inability of the Council of Ministers of BiH to bring to the end any issue it was dealing with.
“This was the case with excise issue and a set of laws that are defined by the reform agenda. Due to such attitude, an arrangement with the IMF has been “frozen” and the EBRD and EU funds have been blocked, including the Transport Community Treaty. Those at the BiH level in vain try to ‘shift the hot potato to Srpska’, since we have shown our attitude towards reforms by fulfilling our obligations seven months ago. After they did nothing, now they would ‘break things over the knees’, ” Cvijanovic told SRNA, when asked to comment BiH Council of Ministers’ accusations that BiH failed to sign the Transport Community Treaty in Trieste due to the disagreements of Srpska. Regarding the thesis that the EU does not accept that the line ministries rotate when presenting BiH’s views within the Transport Community Treaty, Cvijanovic has stressed that this is a matter of an internal agreement, rather than an EU regulation. I would not say that the EU is inclined to additionally complicate what has already been quite complicated in Sarajevo. The EU is interested in a harmonized position that will be agreed and presented on behalf of BiH, not who is presenting it. The EU representatives told us that the solutions from the Treaty could not be changed and we accepted them on the grounds that, if all from the region will survive, we will survive too,” says Cvijanovic.
She notes that “all the fiasco” about the Transport Community is the result of the fact that the BiH Council of Ministers did not conduct any activities on the issue for months, striving to bypass the rules of the coordination mechanism. “Then they woke up from “hibernation” and a two-and-a-half-year long theater performance and decided to accuse Srpska for their inaction. If they intend to continue with it, they are free to do so, but I must say they can no longer deceive Europeans with such groundless theory. After all, the Europeans also made it clear during the meetings in Brussels,” said the Srpska prime minister. As for the Government of Srpska, Cvijanovic says, it seeks to have its role in the process of European integrations in accordance with the constitutional competences. “And that is where our story starts and ends, and the coordination mechanism is the matrix for work,” concluded Cvijanovic.
source: SRNA
