H.E. Mr. Vanja Filipovic:

The EU has the largest economic, political and cultural influence on the whole region, including Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ireland, as a member of the EU, has an important role to play in the formulation of the policy and the approach to enlargement. The EU enlargement to western Balkan states is the only path to permanent stability, peace and prosperity of the region, and it will have a positive effect on overall European security and prosperity. That much is now clear to everybody. For too long this part of the world has been seen as kind of a soft European underbelly, and everybody now more or less agrees that the question needs to be resolved.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, we are looking forward to a faster and more robust approach with the EU, but one thing we expect most is for the EU to play a role that echoes and reflects its own values. For too many years, we have seen the willingness of the EU negotiators and envoys to come up with fast solutions to emerging problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to respond to crises with political expediency rather than with thought-out, long-term solutions. This was often reflected as giving concessions to those who blocked the reform processes, threatened peace and security, or threatened to dissolve institutional advancements that had been made so far. Every time concessions were made, it only backfired. Those who created problems came back with even bigger demands. I am afraid we are looking at one of those scenarios again, especially with regard to the so-called electoral law reform, which is a big political issue that has been on our books for many years. It has been on the books because of the verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights and institutional discrimination that was determined to be ingrained in our constitution and the electoral law.

Instead of working at removing existing discrimination to make us more in line with EU values and norms, there are attempts to circumvent addressing those specific issues to address other issues within the country, especially with regard to some of the incumbent nationalist parties and their state sponsors from the neighbourhood. The EU must take a principled stand against that. If it cannot enforce or at least follow its own rules in the candidate or aspirant countries, the process of reform is unlikely to happen.