Štefan Füle, European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, announced yesterday, after hopes for a last-ditch agreement were definitively dashed, that the EU would be reducing by half the the financial support it provides to perspective Member State Bosnia and Herzegovina. Leaders from Bosnia’s main political parties had been in negotiations since Tuesday to try and hash out a plan to implement a 2009 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that is blocking the country’s bid for membership. In a country were mutual suspicions of ethnic domination persist, it seems unlikely leaders will be able to find a mutually acceptable solution.
The talks held in Brussels sought to remove discriminatory provisions from the young country’s constitution that are currently blocking its bid to join the EU. With no solution in sight, Mr. Füle said, it makes it difficult to justify the EU continuing to give funds to Bosnia to help the country prepare for membership. For 2013, the EU allocated €108.84 million in transition assistance and institution building aid through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA). The country stands to lose out on some €47 million in EU funds for 2013 alone.
The current constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina reserves high public office for ethnic Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. Only members of these ethnic groups may be elected to the Presidency and the House of Peoples, one of the country’s two chambers of parliament. Civil service jobs in the federal government are also largely proportioned along ethnic lines. The peculiar arrangement is part of the power-sharing peace settlement, the Dayton accords, that ended the 1992-95 war that killed an estimated 100,000 people.
Political scientists refer to this unique type of governance as consociationalism. This approach guarantees group representation and has been used on a number of occasions to uphold power-sharing agreements in deeply divided societies (Belfast Agreement, Ohrid Agreement). In Bosnia, the the three-person rotating Presidency and the electoral rules in the Parliament keep any one ‘constituent group’ from dominating politics, but it makes it difficult to move past the post-war stalemate.
While this arrangement has brought relative stability to the war-torn region, critics say Bosnia’s political class continues to lack a shared vision for the country and the elite has become permanently entrenched by these constitutional provisions, using its position to handsomely enrich themselves.
In the landmark 2009 case Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, the ECtHR found that this constitutional provision violated the European Convention on Human Rights. The plaintiffs, Dervo Sejdić and Jakob Finci, Roma and Jewish respectively, were barred by the constitutional provisions from seeking public office in their own country.
Since 2009, Bosnian politicians have been unable to reach an agreement on how to comply with the court’s ruling despite many attempts. Ethnic divisions in Bosnian society continue to run deep and communities see the end of guaranteed and equal representation at the summit of the state as an existential threat. This year, the government struggled with the banal task of undertaking a census, the country’s first since 1991, because of fears that it would further polarise the population. Losing numbers is perceived by many as a threat, opening the floodgates to being dominated by other ethnic groups.
Füle has said that leaders have a few more days to find an agreement before their fate is sealed. The issue has come to a head because the Commission’s annual progress report will be published shortly. A negative opinion will represent a significant set back for hopes of membership. Parliamentary and presidential elections are also scheduled to be held in October 2014 and any changes in electoral law must be finalised by the end of the year. In April, Füle laid down a clear red line, saying that, “further general elections violating the European Convention on Human Rights would...be unacceptable.”
