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Pro-entity politicians stall Bosnia and Herzegovina's EU progress
Real estate news By Antonio Prlenda
17/09/07
A country with an outstandingly complicated government structure, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has been facing particularly slow progress in recent months. The election campaign last year was marked by a return to inflammatory, ethno-nationalist rhetoric, and the political climate has continued to deteriorate. The EU has made it clear that the country's chances of moving ahead in its accession bid depend on substantial reforms, aimed at strengthening state institutions. The current state composition -- with three constituent peoples and two entities -- is a product of the Dayton Agreement, which ended the four-year conflict in 1995.
While the deal was credited with halting the violence, most observers agree that the political system it established is complicated, inefficient, expensive and ultimately incompatible with EU standards. However, the political will to change it is proving hard to muster. Hardline politicians in both entities are responsible for the stalemate, but most observers agree that Republika Srpska (RS) Prime Minister Milorad Dodik has done the most to foster the current adversarial atmosphere. Leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), which swept the 2006 elections, Dodik has been a fierce advocate of strengthening the Bosnian Serb entity at the expense of the state.
"I am interested in nothing else but the RS. For me, the BiH is just a construction of Dayton, created by the agreement. And I respect the agreement," he said recently. On another occasion, he described BiH as a "speed brake on the development of RS". Local and foreign politicians alike have criticised him for seeking to make the entity a semi-autonomous state. The election campaign saw calls from Bosniak politicians for RS to be abolished. Dodik responded with threats of an independence referendum. Top RS officials and entity representatives in the BiH Parliament have warned they could request the return of all authorities that were transferred from the entities to the state in recent years.
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