H.E. Mr. Vanja Filipovic:

The new forum is an important new venue for discussion of emerging threats and things that span the borders of the EU and affect the entire Continent. In that regard, it is very good to have this initiative. Everybody came back with a positive view. This new organisation does not, though, substitute for the need and goal of my country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to meet the Copenhagen criteria, not because that process is there but because we need it and we want to reform our country and to make it a vibrant, democratic and rule-of-law state, with a vibrant and open market economy. We wish to uphold the values of the Copenhagen criteria and meet them for ourselves and not just as something we must achieve to become a member state in time. We need to undertake this reform for ourselves and for the benefit of our citizens. The new forum is a good initiative to facilitate discussion and it reflects the new reality, but it does not fully substitute for what already exists.