Belgium and Herzegovina

Today my article that compared Bosnia and Herzegovina and Belgium appaeared at the Strasbourger website. It has been edited, therefore I am below copying the version I sent originally to the site editors.

Bosnia and Herzegovina - Belgium of South-east Europe

No, no, there is not vast chocolate production in Bosnia and Herzegovina neither an image of its citizens living on waffles and French fries that you have not yet heard about. What made Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) comparable to Belgium until recently was an inability to form the government. Fourteen months following the general elections held in October 2010, following a series of futile talks the main political parties in BiH finally reached an agreement on the formation of a new state-level government on December 28, 2011. What actually convinced them was a threat that after January 1, 2012 there would be no budgetary income in the country, which previously was made operational due to the High Representative Valentin Inzko's decree. The later is the chief of a civilian peace implementation agency in Bosnia and Herzegovina created by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that brought to an end a bloody ethnic-conflict that lasted from 1992 to 1995.

The new leadership will finally be able to adopt a state budget that will ensure the full functioning of the state-level institutions and the fulfilment of BiH’s international obligations. Fourteen-month long political deadlock had negatively influenced the economy of this already poor country. BiH has lost a substantive number of its functional elites in early 1990s when more than a million persons (out of 4,4 million total population of that time) fled to other countries. This as well constitutes a serious societal loss, since often those who decided not to return to the country of their origin and requested citizenship of other countries gained university education and high professional achievements. Although BiH, that used to be one of the least developed former Yugoslav republics, has nowadays little to offer to such outstanding people quite a number of them decides to return and try to improve their country of origin investing their energy, time and knowledge, at the same time using the international networks they developed abroad. This enduring tie with the country of origin the case of the Oscar winning Danis Tanovic portrays very well. Tanovic, resident of Paris, dedicated his 2001 Oscar prize for the best foreign movie to his country, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The similarity between the two countries does not end yet. Both apply consociational model of democracy. In both countries various power-sharing mechanisms are at stake, assuring co-existence of several constituent peoples. However, such a model might result in discriminatory practices towards some parts of population. In the case of BiH, only citizens that belong to Croat, Bosniak or Serb ethnicity are entitled to positions in the tripartite presidency of the country and can be elected to the House of Peoples, the upper parliamentary house. Although the European Court of Human Rights rulled in 2009 that the BiH constitution violates the right to free elections and is discriminating ethnic minorities in running for major state posts, no amendments have been done yet in order to rectify the discriminatory treatment of ethnic minorities.

Being multi-ethnic states, both BiH and Belgium are on the verge of the split. Republika Srpska, an entity created by the Dayton Peace Agreement that is dominated by the Serbs, is over and over calling for a secession. Perhaps the solution of BiH survival as a state would be to place in the capital Sarajevo a seat of an institution that would have a broader integrative effect, as it was the case with Brussels? Indeed, the seat of the Regional Cooperation Council /), a regional cooperative initiative that in 2008 succeeded the very first internationally brokered conflict-prevention initiative for the region– the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe. BiH progress towards EU integration does not appear promising, and this country is the only Western Balkans country apart internationally (still fully) not recognized Kosovo, who has not submitted a membership application. Conditions that would ensure progress towards EU integration with a current over-complicated organizational structure of the country and the repetitive secessionist threats of the Republika Srpska seems quite unlikely to be met. BiH is required to undertake constitutional reform. A number of proposals for the new constitutional are being thrown to the table, often authored in conjunction with prominent international experts. It is yet the politicians who need to find a compromise in order to make those proposals feasible. The recent agreement on the formation of a new state-level government offers a glimpse of hope since this is the very first functioning agreement the local politicians came to entirely on their own, without the international community’s assistance.