When the General Framework Agreement for Peace in BiH was signed in Paris in December 1995, the almost four years long bloody war ended. Before that, in November 1995, a peace agreement was reached in Dayton after many attempts since the beginning of the conflict in 1992. Richard Holbrooke, with a robust diplomatic peace mission, managed to involve all relevant regional factors in the peace process. Peace began, war ended, the US played a key role.
Bosnia and Herzegovina brought a war dowry into the newly created state, which made BiH completely different from the one that was part of the vanished SFRY.
The dowry included Republika Srpska, founded in 1992, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, created by the Washington Agreement in 1994, and the District of Brčko, created by the Arbitration Decision in 1998.
The international sovereignty and territorial integrity of BiH is a product of its Dayton constitutional structure, which consists of two entities (one of which is compact and unitary, and the other has its conditional territorial integrity with 10 cantons, without which the Federation of BiH would never have been created) and one condominium (Brčko district) which is owned by the two entities.
Peace was achieved through this endemic constitutional order, without which BiH with its three constituent nations could never exist.
From that December 14, 1995, until today, the enigma has not been solved: how to proceed in peace?
It will soon be three decades since the establishment of peace, and many are still wondering: What to do next?
All this post-war period was marked by the constant dissatisfaction of a part of the influential world with the lack of “real progress” in BiH. In this qualification, the EU and the USA are leading the way. And I think they are making a huge mistake in continuity.
Progress in the post-war period of BiH is certainly impressive. Although this statement seems very pretentious to many people, when everything that has happened since the end of the war is looked at in the right way, it should not be concluded otherwise.
The biggest problem, in a realistic and objective assessment of progress, is made by those who are the least satisfied with the progress, namely the wasted foreign officials who get the chair of the High Representative in BiH. All of the rank and file, with the partial exception of Carl Bildt and to some extent Miroslav Lajčak, came to BiH as worn-out politicians in their countries for a high salary and imperial status in BiH, and what is worse, with more and more liberties in each further year since the war.
Each of them with their personal ambitions of “accelerated progress of BiH towards the EU” increasingly distanced the elected BiH politicians from each other, and thus from compromise as the only solution for the whole country, and for BiH in particular.
For a full 28 years, BiH has had an emperor with legislative, executive and judicial powers against which there is no right of appeal and for which there is no second instance procedure guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights and Freedoms. That this is unacceptable and unsustainable is stated by the Venice Commission in its Opinion on the constitutional and legal situation in BiH and the powers of the High Representative from March 2005. But who in the EU cares about that.
BiH has been in constant peace since the end of the war, the UN mission was successfully completed in 2001, almost all obligations from the peace agreement were implemented, full freedom of movement was established, private property was returned on a huge scale, the Central Bank of BiH came to life, established single currency, complete freedom of movement of capital and goods established, Customs and State Border Service fully established, unified system of collection of indirect taxes and VAT system established, the Armed Forces of BiH were constituted, established diplomatic network, production of identification documents of citizens, judicial and prosecutorial system at the BiH level….
It would be pointless to list further, because BiH, as an internationally recognized country, received a more than sufficient scope of state functions…
For a country where the bloodiest internal war of the 20th century was fought on European soil, such post-war progress could not have been imagined by the most optimistic participants in reaching a peace agreement. Many of them openly admit it today.
When it comes to relation to BiH, European hypocrisy is growing every year.
Only one comparison is sufficient with one full member of the EU, and that is Cyprus.
The war there ended in 1974, two decades before the war in BiH ended. Although the war there ended almost half a century ago, in dozens of attempts to reach any solution for the functioning of the state on the entire territory of Cyprus, the situation has not changed even today. There is no progress and this is a completely divided country where there has been no return of property, no freedom of movement, not even the slightest state function that includes the whole of Cyprus. Even today, the phantom state of Northern Cyprus exists with Turks who do not accept any state sovereignty of Cyprus, a member of the EU, on their territory.
Where is Cyprus now, five decades after the war, and where is BiH three decades after the war?
Cyprus is in the EU, and BiH is on the EU path with no end.
And if a comparison were made with various post-conflict societies around the world, the picture of BiH’s progress would be even more impressive. I will list only some of them: Palestine, an internationally recognized country without territory, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria…
Is the situation in those countries better after the war than in BiH?
Why didn’t the big states of the world, which profile the geopolitical situation in post-conflict countries, establish the function of High Representative in all those states to act imperially, as in BiH?
The EU has done injustice to the countries of the Western Balkans and caused numerous internal conflicts in all the countries of the Western Balkans.
The root of all problems lies in the unfulfilled intention of expanding the EU to the Western Balkans, i.e. on the territory of the former SFRY plus Albania. The summit in Thessaloniki in June 2003 was supposed to be the trigger for the entry into the EU of all countries south of the Alps in the Balkans. Since then, from this area, Slovenia became a full member of the EU in 2004, followed by Croatia in 2013.
No one else came even close to the status of the EU member.
Everyone in BiH saw the invitation from Thessaloniki for EU membership as the only serious perspective. In a short time, 16 conditions from the Feasibility Study were met for the start of negotiations on the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU.
The negotiating team of BiH concluded the negotiations regarding the stabilization and association agreement with the EU relatively quickly, so this agreement was already signed in 2008.
BiH does not yet have a start date for negotiations with the EU, and it received candidate status only in 2022.
It seems cynical and insulting, but also destroys all assumptions about fair and equal conditions for joining the EU, that the EU has been working with Ukraine and Moldova lately. This month, the EU decided that Ukraine and Moldova should start accession negotiations with the EU, and for BiH it was decided that the negotiations should start when it meets the criteria for membership. So ironic!!!
For the Western Balkans criteria, including and humiliating for North Macedonia, which had to change the name of the state in order to win negotiations, and for Ukraine and Moldova in less than a year and a half from the beginning of the negotiations, skipping all previous conditions that have been imposed and extended to the countries of the Western Balkans for years. In addition, these two countries have serious territorial disputes with the Russian Federation, and Ukraine is actively involved in a war with Russia.
Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, told Ukraine and Moldova with great enthusiasm like Gaius Julius Caesar “Veni, Vidi, Vici” (I came, I saw, I won), and then she told the Western Balkans just as excitedly and enthusiastically : “Veni, Vidi, Substiti” (I came, I saw, I stayed).
As things stand today, for the EU, the only real condition for accelerated EU membership is for the country to be at war with the Russian Federation.
Humiliated and insulted, everyone in BiH, we are even more devastated and hopeless after the arrival of Christian Schmidt, who, without a legal mandate, will roam around BiH for who knows how long, enjoying the role of emperor, which, according to his confession, was directly assigned to him by the former chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Angela Merkel.
The last similar move happened in BiH more than a century ago when, after the occupation of BiH by Austria-Hungary in 1878, when Austria-Hungary appointed Benjamin Kallay as the Administrator of BiH in 1882, and he remained in that position until his death in 1903.
Christian Schmidt is Benjamin Kallay of the 21st century.
Imposed by the decision of one country and its ruler, with the difference that Benjamin Kallay served the entire time of BiH governance as the Minister of Finance in the Austro-Hungarian government, while Christian Schmidt is a worn-out, hopeless politician of Germany sent on a long political vacation in BiH, where he is allowed to play with the fate of people and nations in his ambition to “accelerate BiH’s path to the EU”.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, a beautiful country, hospitable people, physically on European soil, actually outside of Europe thanks to Europe above all.
By delaying the integration of BiH into the EU, the forces of disintegration of BiH itself are accelerating.
BiH gave everything it could to become a member of the EU, it cannot give any more because it will not last. The way it is, with the constitutional structure that brought it peace, it can only be a member of the EU, and without such a constitutional structure, BiH will not be able to be either.
Author: Dragan Čavić
The Srpska Times
