Bakir Izetbegović, a member of the tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, announced on Tuesday 8 November that Enlargement Negotiations Commissioner Johannes Hahn would travel to Sarajevo on 9 December to deliver the pre-accession questionnaire of some 2,000 questions to be completed by the country. The Council will use this questionnaire to help it decide whether or not to grant the country candidate status.
Addressing the European Parliament foreign affairs committee, Izetbegović stated that responding to the questionnaire would be a matter of priority for all levels of governance in his country so that the European Commission could deliver its opinion on candidate status “as quickly as possible”. He said that his country’s goal was to achieve candidate status by the end of 2017.
Izetbegović said, too, that the next 12-18 months would be very busy for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to completing the questionnaire, the country will intensify implementation of the reform programme and, thanks to the adoption of the cooperation mechanism, all levels of government will work on strategic documents in the areas of agriculture, transport and energy in order to qualify for European funding.
He hopes, too, that an agreement on the Sejdic-Finci case – that is, bringing Bosnia’s constitution into line with the European Convention on Human Rights – might be reached. “But, to be honest, I fear that, despite the urgency, it will be very difficult to find a solution”, he said, pointing out that any such agreement required the approval of two thirds of both chambers of parliament, made up of 14 different political parties. “It would be useful for the implementation of this agreement that it is not considered a pre-requisite for accession” to the EU, he argued, calling on the EU to proceed with caution and to think strategically. In his view, the difficult issues, including the institutional questions, must be included in the accession negotiation chapters. He added that the authorities would, over the next two years, lay the emphasis on economic and social reforms and on the strengthening of the rule of law. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)