Bosnia and Herzegovina

While Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is not ready for EU accession, the United Nations High Representative for Bosnia, Christian Schmidt, told Euractiv that EU leaders must be aware the country could be at great risk if the accession process is further delayed.  

The UN General Assembly on Thursday voted to create an annual day of remembrance for the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, in which Serb forces killed around 8,000 Muslim men and teenage boys.

The resolution designates July 11 as the International Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica Genocide. … The resolution was written by Germany and Rwanda — two countries synonymous with 20th-century genocides — but it has faced fierce opposition from Serbia.

A U.N. resolution sponsored by Germany and Rwanda to establish an annual day to commemorate the 1995 genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs has sparked protests and a strong lobbying campaign against its adoption by Serbia’s president and the Bosnian Serb leadership.

Almost twenty-nine years after the signing of the Dayton Agreement — which ended the 1992-1995 war and created two entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina — the Security Council heard today that such Agreement is the starting point for that country’s accession to the European Union, as speakers urged action to advance genuine reconciliation among Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs.

Both positive and “worrying” developments have recently unfolded in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a top UN official told the Security Council on Tuesday at an emergency meeting requested by Russia.

France will be one of the co-sponsors of a draft UN resolution on Srebrenica, the Srebrenica Memorial Center announced on April 12, a move that would establish a day marking the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. 

After Bosnia’s international overseer imposed changes to the national election law, Serb-dominated Republika Srpska responded by adopting a draft of its own version of the legislation and threatening to paralyse state-level decision-making.

Bosnia’s international peace overseer on Tuesday (26 March) imposed changes to the country’s election law to ensure its integrity, including barring convicted war criminals from running, ahead of a vote in October. … Christian Schmidt said the aim of the “integrity package” was to restore voter trust through measures such as electronic scanning, counting of ballots and voter identification, as well as making election committees more professional.

The European Commission on Tuesday recommended opening European Union membership talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina, saying the Balkan country had made more progress on reforms over the past year than in the previous decade.

The trial of Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik on charges of defying the rulings of an international peace envoy formally begun on Monday after delays due to his protests against judges he said were biased and other complaints.