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Bosnia and Herzegovina will start EU accession negotiations 30 years after the end of the civil war. The country has made little progress since, and the Serbs – backed by the Russians – are threatening secession.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, the laggard of the Western Balkans
Bosnia and Herzegovina was the only country out of the 5 states in the Western Balkans with candidate status that had not started EU accession negotiations. Deep-rooted ethnic divisions and delays in constitutional, judicial and electoral reforms had prevented it from catching up with its neighbors.
In mid-March, when the European Commission gave the green light to the start of negotiations, the head of the European executive, Ursula Von der Leyen, said that progress was still needed, but that the country had proven that it could meet the accession criteria.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine opened a new perspective on the Union's expansion, with the Western Balkans region seen as crucial to the bloc's geopolitical relevance.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the poorest countries in Europe, which broke away from the former Yugoslavia after a brutal war, has an extremely unwieldy political structure. The war of secession ended in 1995 with the Dayton Peace Accords that has superseded the Constitution all this time. The agreement took into account the realities of the moment and thus established a tricephalic system of government of which the three entities - Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian - were part. Governing it all is the High Representative of the international community. With such a government structure divided between the three main ethnic groups, who, let's not forget, were in conflict during the Bosnian war, it is no wonder that any attempt at reform, at progress, has failed.
The start of EU accession negotiations finds Bosnia and Herzegovina in about the same state as it was after the end of the war. The economy is down, the political system has allowed corruption to become endemic, and the state organization is simply inconceivable and hard to understand for anyone from another European country.
The state is composed of two main political entities, the multi-ethnic Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with its rotating tripartite presidency, and Republika Srpska, with a predominantly Serbian population, plus the autonomous region of Brcko.
Thirty years after the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to be marked by conflict
In 1992, after the independence referendum rejected by the Bosnian Serb representatives, Bosnian Muslims, who account for 44% of the country's population, proclaimed the independence of Bosnia Herzegovina. It was the spark that lit the fire of the cruelest war of secession in modern times, in the heart of Europe. The Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadzic and supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), mobilized their forces to secure the ethnic Serb territory, and the war soon spread throughout the country. The damage of the war, which lasted three years, is estimated at 100 billion dollars. After the conflict, a country was left where the few arable areas were impassable, for the simple fact that they were mined. Even now, almost 30 years after the end of the war, Bosnia remains one of the most mined countries in the world, with nearly 2 percent of its 51,209 square km area still affected by this war scar. Add to that the unexploded ordnance. Demining is a process as difficult as it is expensive. Money came from the West, but only for the clearing of arable land, and the forests are still real traps.
Rural areas are affected by extreme poverty. The war had a profound impact on Bosnian farmers. Their animals and households were destroyed and thus most became unemployed with no prospect of recovery. The support that came after the war was mainly focused on urban areas, leaving the countryside to fend for itself. And the rural environment is home to the majority of the population of over 3 million inhabitants.
At least a hundred thousand people died in the Bosnian war. Tens of thousands fled during and after it ended, triggering an intractable labor crisis.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a perfect example of the long-term impact that war can have on the economy and society.
The pro-Russian leader of the Bosnian Serbs is talking about secession
Adding to this picture are the secessionist aspirations of the Serbian entity known as Republika Srpska. Its leader, Milorad Dodik, Putin's Balkan vassal, has been trying for years to break this small space from the body of an already small and troubled country. Dodik has fueled inter-ethnic tensions, on the same principle used 32 years ago by Slobodan Milosevic, and promoted his secessionist agenda, supported by Moscow.
Last year, in June, the local parliament in Banja Luka decided not to recognize the decisions of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to ignore the directives of the High Representative of the international community. It’s one of the most serious violations so far of the Dayton Peace Agreement which, however, the High Representative Schmidt, by means of his prerogatives, annulled, stating that it threatened the Constitutional order in the Federation. But in turn Dodik also rejected Christian Schmidt's decision, declaring it illegal.
Dodik has only one goal, to separate Republika Srpska from Bosnia, no matter the cost. For this purpose, 3 years ago, he boycotted the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina after the former High Representative promoted legislative changes sanctioning the denial of genocide. In late 2021, Dodik announced the withdrawal of Republika Srpska from the joint army, the judiciary and tax administration of the Federation. But he backed down after the Russians invaded Ukraine, under the pretext that it would "complicate too much the geopolitical position of Republika Srpska in complex geopolitical circumstances."
The European Union has a hot potato to manage because Dodik, as Putin's vassal and with the war in Ukraine still on, will try to further test the West's limits on its separatist intentions. Neither the High Representative nor the direct American sanctions against him were effective in stopping Milorad Dodik.
The European Parliament has called on the Council to impose sanctions on the Banja Luka leader. If managed well, they could be more effective than the Americans’ , for the simple reason that Bosnia and Herzegovina has much stronger political, security and economic ties to the EU than to the US.
The future of Bosnia, linked to developments in Kosovo and Ukraine
However, Dodik's future is linked to the evolution of the war in Ukraine, the ability of the Union to remain united and be quick in making security policy decisions. It is a spectrum that could directly affect the "little dictator" in the Balkans.
The dynamics of regional security are also added if we take into account the violence in the north of the province of Kosovo. The fact that the EU is unable to find a negotiated solution to the tensions between Belgrade and Pristina, however, encourages Dodik, because in his view, the power of the community club, which has been managing the crises in the region for years, tends to zero.
In other words, as long as the situation in the north of Kosovo remains explosive and unresolved, the danger of it contaminating Bosnia-Herzegovina remains, and there are chances it may also grow.
Dodik, though, might have problems with Belgrade, where in the backstage of Serbian politics there is talk that President Vucic is no longer that happy with Dodik, whom, however, he publicly supports. The separatist policy of the RS does not benefit Serbia precisely because Serbia itself is under pressure from the West to get closer to the EU in terms of foreign and security policy and to finally solve the Kosovo issues.
Beyond the criteria of the Community acquis, which Bosnia must meet, the European Union will have to find a way to extract this thorn called Republika Srpska.
Under normal conditions, i.e. without Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, it is likely that the accession process of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the EU would have followed the classic path that the other ex-Yugoslav states took.
The stakes are now too high for both Brussels and Sarajevo. Basically, the green wave to Brussels for Sarajevo is a serious signal for Moscow, but also an important piece for the community's influence in the Balkans.
Just as in February, the parliament in Sarajevo, after years of discussions without any results, succeeded in adopting the law on combating money laundering and terrorist financing, maybe now, under the impetus of these negotiations, the three-headed political class of Bosnia and Herzegovina will first manage what it has failed to do in the last 30 years: to get rid of the slag of war, to reform itself and even turn the state into one governed by the rule of law.
For that, the EU will be there, with money and advice. And there is something else, with or without Dodik's will, 80 percent of the population of this country really wants to be in the European Union, knowing that prosperity comes from there.
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