prijava
SARAJEVO, June 24 (FENA) - On the European path, we should focus on the messages of European officials who see BiH in the EU as a modern, unified and sovereign state, and not on individual MEPs who completely wrongly treat BiH as a mere sum of three nations, said Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH Denis Zvizdić.
As Zvizdić reminded in his Twitter post, Oliver Varhelyi, European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement, during his address to the European Parliament, as part of the debate on the "BiH Progress Report for the period 2019-2020", sent an extremely important message "that the European Commission is ready to grant BiH candidate status, provided that BiH also delivers concrete results in meeting 14 key priorities".
The concrete results, as Varhelyi pointed out, "include launching a debate on constitutional reform and especially electoral reforms, and the adoption of judicial reforms. BiH, like other candidate countries, must amend the Constitution to meet the requirements of EU membership, clarifying that this includes full compliance with the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and ensuring equal representation for all in the country".
The reform package, which would create preconditions for BiH to obtain candidate status, includes an amendment to the Law on the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH, as well as laws related to conflicts of interest and public procurement.
“Therefore, the obligations on the European path are clear and there is no serious reason for the BiH Council of Ministers and the BiH Parliamentary Assembly not to adopt the mentioned reform package, complete their part of the work and enable BiH to get candidate status by the end of 2021. This is the obligation of all those who participate in the EU integration process, and especially the elected and appointed officials towards the citizens of BiH, who in a percentage of 75 percent declared that they support the European path of BiH. I believe that it is necessary, and that this should be a key criterion for assessing the quality of work of all competent institutions in BiH, to dedicate ourselves to active and efficient work on BiH's European and NATO integrations, remove political and administrative blockades, stop division rhetoric and hate speech and to be focused on a secure and prosperous future for BiH. As Oliver Varhelyi, European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement, put it: "Let me reiterate that the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina is in the EU as a single, united and sovereign country." This statement is an important message for BiH, but also for the entire region of the Western Balkans,” Zvizdić concluded.
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