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1/ Two days before his semiannual report to the UN Security Council, High Representative Christian Schmidt announced that he would be resigning his post as international High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). However, he also stated he would remain in post until a successor is chosen.

https://www.oslobodjenje.ba/vijesti/bih/christian-schmidt-odlazi-sa-funkcije-visokog-predstavnika-u-bi-h

2/ The move comes after months of speculation that the US wanted Schmidt to leave and applied pressure. It follows the marked American shift in policy in BiH beginning last October, with the blanket lifting of sanctions on convicted former RS President Milorad Dodik, who remains the de facto leader of the entity.

3/ This shift was also manifest in reported US admonitions against using the executive Bonn Powers, which the US had previously assertively supported – including their application during Schmidt’s near five-year tenure.

4/ @DPCGlobal has been highly critical of some of Schmidt’s actions. But it is important that Schmidt remains until a successor is named and can arrive – otherwise, the US will be able to seize control of OHR by default, if American Principal Deputy High Representative Louis Crishock has the helm as acting High Rep.

5/ Schmidt’s announcement also notably follows the passage of legislation in the Federation regarding the Southern Interconnector project, as well as an interstate treaty between BiH and Croatia – moves aggressively pushed by the US.

6/ The EU has made its misgivings on the SIC known in a letter by EU Head of Delegation Luigi Soreca to FBiH officials. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/23/eu-risks-fallout-with-us-trump-linked-balkans-pipeline-plan-intervention

7/ Dodik has been clear he wants state property fully under his control in the RS. Diplomatic sources relate to DPC that the US and Italy would be fine with a Dodik-friendly arrangement for their own interests.

https://www.democratizationpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/DPC-Policy-Note18_State-Property-in-BiH.pdf

8/ While the US may be playing for simple transactionalism and opportunity for profit, the confluence of these deals in the present environment are a recipe for even more state-weakening and ethno-territorial division of BiH, reinforced by foreign malign influence.

9/ So now the pressure is on Europe+ to come up with a Bosnia – and wider Balkan – strategy to protect its values and interests from all geopolitical challengers, starting with the US.

10/ The first step needs to be to resist the selection of a Schmidt successor who will accommodate the Trump administration’s transactionalist interests in BiH.

11/ Europe+’s members in the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) – the UK, Canada, Japan, and EU members France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain need to propose a strategy to the Union as a whole, and soon, to avoid a vacuum the US could exploit in the short-term, but with long-term consequence.

12/ Europe+ needs to ensure that it chooses Schmidt’s successor that will be ready to wield a strategy to continue to employ the Bonn Powers in the service of the Annex 10 mandate, to insure BiH’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,…

13/…protect institutions built since Dayton, and to help citizens of BiH make confident moves to a post-Dayton social contract that would enable meaningful progression towards EU accession.

14/ This will need to entail a commitment to cover the entire OHR budget – as it may well be that the US makes its displeasure felt at not getting its way by not paying its contribution. While many Europeans may balk, this is relative pocket change when compared to the influence that can have in BiH & the region.

15/ Furthermore, and just as crucially, Europe+ needs to reflect a “coalition of the willing” in maintaining a capable EUFOR by reinforcing it to brigade strength prior to October 2026 elections to demonstrate resolve to outside actors seeking to permanently destabilize the country and region.

16/ BiH is the central conflict generator and reservoir in the Western Balkans, having dragged both Croatian and Serbian democratic development backwards by being allowed by the EU-led “West” – now a term devoid of geopolitical meaning – for 20 years.

17/ Calls for Schmidt not to be replaced and OHR closed are deeply irresponsible – and either highly cynical or deluded in light of the facts on the ground and current trendlines.

18/ BiH’s Dayton political economy and operating system makes the political class gatekeepers for external actors seeking to benefit from public goods.

19/ Despite the clamor for state property to be resolved to promote “investment,” it is clear that until the country’s constitutional system is replaced with a new social contract, no resolution in the public interest is feasible.

20/ Appointing a US-approved High Rep to “resolve” state property would only enrich a handful of political spoilers and further undermine the country’s sovereignty, integrity, and declared aim of EU membership.

21/ Despite hopes in Brussels and member state capitals that they could simply do more of the same in the Western Balkans, Europe+ will have to upshift in BiH if it wants to prove itself a potent actor in its own “courtyard,”…

22a/ …and not allow a US in its own state of democratic decline to destabilize the country and region for its own short-term gain.

22b/ Sidestepping confrontation with Trump’s US by ceding influence would constitute appeasement, yielding permanent instability not only in BiH, but regionally.

23/ And nowhere on earth is Europe+ more potent collectively than the WB6, BiH in particular. If it doesn’t draw the line here, it is advertising it will not do so anywhere.

24/ Schmidt’s announcement oughtn’t have caught Europe+ completely flatfooted; succession had to be discussed, at least within foreign ministries.

25/ But this moment demands rapid strategic evolution for Europe+ members in a situation where they are relatively more empowered than elsewhere. They need to demonstrate that they can rise to the occasion.

The post Following High Rep Schmidt’s announced departure, it’s not a time for Europe+ to be timid in BiH appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

While the global arena has witnessed a solid nine months of relentless, flamboyant norm-busting by the second Trump administration, this dynamic seemed to largely leave previously established American topline policies intact. Of course, the wanton destruction of USAID early in the administration delivered a deep blow in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the rest of the Western Balkans, and – with devastating effect – globally. The wider Trump family engaged in deals, such as deeply controversial developments in Serbia and Albania. And US embassies became far less vocal and interactive with their erstwhile closest partners, including the EU – which has set the pace for the West through its enlargement policy for two decades. But the fundamentals of Washington’s policies pertaining to BiH and the region remained largely consistent, including the sanctions regime against the Republika Srpska (RS) separatist leader – and now convicted criminal and former RS President – Milorad Dodik and a wide circle of his family, associates, party, and connected businesses……

Read the full blog at BiEPAG here.

The post Where to for EU Enlargement in the Age of Reaction? The View from Sarajevo appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Dayton peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 war, citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are the most dissatisfied in the Western Balkans with the way they are being governed, an opinion survey highlighted.

Read more at Balkan Insight here.

The post Bosnians ‘Most Dissatisfied in the Balkans’ with their Politics – Is Brussels Listening? appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

From Munich to Yalta

The annual Munich Security Conference (MSC) was even more eventful this year than it has been in the past, due mainly to the disposition of the administration of US President Trump, who in less than a full month in office has demonstrated a willingness to “run fast and break things.” The messaging from the Riyadh summit between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s veteran Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov amplified fears of a carve up – and not only of Ukraine. Trump’s subsequent verbal assault on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a “dictator” and saying that he needed to “act fast” (e.g., accede to Russian demands) or “you won’t have a country” (a line he used on the campaign trail) amplified the cognitive dissonance and panic in Europe. 

The implications are existential – and not just for Ukraine, the EU, and its democratic neighbors and allies. The EU’s foundational values and security are being directly and actively threatened. They can only be defended together.

Et tu, America?

American democracy is in peril. The systematic attack on the US Government bureaucracy by Elon Musk’s DOGE, beginning with the attack on USAID and domestic good governance guardrails, its aggressive posture towards friendly neighbors Canada and Mexico, and Trump’s real estate fantasy for Gaza by means of US-sanctioned ethnic cleansing, were unthinkable enough.

But Trump’s call with Russian President Putin and their plan to meet for negotiations to bring Moscow’s imperial war to an end (perhaps by the end of February) – without consulting Ukrainian President Zelensky or planning to include him (or European allies) – ominously tops off a mere month of the Trump regime. The aggressive speeches by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance in Brussels and Paris earlier in the week further shocked Europe in both tone and message, and in the clear disdain they reflected. Hegseth effectively demanded European commitment to enforce a peace deal which remains ethereal, but would involve Ukrainian territorial concessions.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas correctly framed the American push for a “negotiated settlement,” together with ruling out Ukraine’s membership in NATO, as “appeasement.” European leaders asserted that no peace could be agreed without Ukraine – and Europe.

In his speech to the MSC, Vance sidestepped the central issue of Ukraine and European security to assert in a show of Orwellian doublespeak that the main security challenge to Europe was internal, claiming it was Europe’s democracy that was at risk.

His language was specifically aimed at support for the far right in Germany and beyond, whilst claiming “shared values” – leaving one to wonder what might be the values he claims to want to share.  Expressing such hubris in Germany, which is facing elections in a week, was particularly pointed. As if to add emphasis and clarify the values he is espousing, he met with far-right Alternative for Germany leader Alice Weidel – directly engaging in the final stages of an election on the side of the AfD. What he claimed are “shared values” are in fact a new manifestation of the nationalism, imperialism, exclusion and hate that underpinned two world wars in the 20th century.

Curiously, Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the cabinet member most known to MSC denizens over the past decade, and among Trump’s cabinet and advisors the most “normal” – was the least visible and audible member on the administration’s European tour.

European Cognitive Dissonance

The European reaction was properly swift, demonstrating a broad sense of betrayal and anger. French President Macron called a meeting with a select group of European leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, on Monday, Feb. 17 to discuss European defense. Ukraine’s President Zelensky in a speech and interview advocated an “armed forces of Europe,” along with common defense production and foreign policy, to ensure that Europe could defend itself. 

The need for Europe to prepare to go it alone (with as much support as it can muster from democracies further afield – Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) seems vital, wrenching though this may be. If Europe manages to rise to the occasion – far from a given – its greatest vulnerability will be in the buildup period. To begin to get there, it must successfully confront and prevail over its real “enemy from within:” its illiberal, Russia-friendly member governments, led by Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who was pointedly excluded from the February 17 meeting, and is a darling among many in Trump’s orbit.

A broader concern is that Trump and much of his team see not Europe, but Russia’s Putin and company as values allies; their talking points share numerous similarities. Both prefer to act unilaterally, with contempt for weaker neighbors – and a preference for short-term transactionalism that enables the enrichment of cronies without regard to the broader social and economic stability that has enabled growth for decades. In addition, there is a school of thought which seeks to separate Russia from China – a relationship which tightened immediately before the full-scale invasion was launched three years ago. Yet the effect of the new US policy seems to place the world, including an alliance spanning four generations, on the drafting table of a new three-way Yalta – or 2.5, given Russia’s increased dependence on China.

The emergence of the US as a malign actor and aggressive disruptor already has had global consequences (potentially condemning millions to starvation and death from disease); these will metastasize. In addition to these unconscionable foreseeable impacts – which Europe and other democracies will need to address – there are more immediate security and defense implications for the EU’s neighborhood, particularly its enlargement area. These countries, in terms of their reliability as allies, risks they pose (and harbor), and assets for collective defense, need to be taken into account as Europe scrambles to recalibrate its common defense.

Europe’s Soft Underbelly

When it comes to the Western Balkans – the region in which the EU and the collective West has the greatest leverage – the EU’s policies remain locked on an autopilot. The events of the past week demonstrate that the EU must shift into fifth gear, for its own survival as a community of independent democracies. This requires a fundamental recalibration of its posture in the region.

In no country is this self-defeating dynamic clearer than in Serbia. Aleksandar Vučić faces the most persistent and determined challenge to his nearly 13-year rule from a statewide student-led protest movement demanding accountability and rule of law after the Novi Sad railway station roof collapse in November 2024. 

In a February 6 open letter, European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos encouraged Serbians to have faith in the accession process to resolve institutional deficits, ignoring the role of the Serbian regime in creating the conditions for the kleptocracy and kakistocracy (governance by society’s worst – see also pathocracy) that enabled the Novi Sad collapse. 

It was received – correctly – as tone-deaf and out of touch. Informed observers have shared that the letter’s text was toned down by Commission President von der Leyen, who feared endangering equities with Vučić – an assertion we cannot confirm, but which would be far from surprising given her engagement to date.

In addition to being offensive to the young people who are showing their commitment to the EU’s professed values and simply seek dignity after decades of dysfunction and rising autocracy, this approach shows the willful ignorance of some in the EU; the accession process will not solve the demands of the protesters; the protesters’ demands need to be met so that the accession process may credibly begin.

Instead, the demonstrations continue undeterred by attempts by the Vučić regime to paint them as a foreign plot. The relative sizes of a substantial protest gathering in the central city of Kragujevac (to which thousands marched from across the country), and a spare and minimally energetic regime-organized Serbian unity rally in Sremska Mitrovica supported by Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik and busloads of people from Republika Srpska, was illustrative. The leaders’ tightening relationship seems compelled by their domestic circumstances. Vučić’s efforts to paint the student-led popular movement as financed by USAID and use of the term “color revolution” sounded increasingly desperate and ridiculous. Both hope that Trump & Co’s moves will buoy their sinking fortunes. 

Actors from across the region seek to profit from the transatlantic turmoil for their standing agendas. On the final day of the MSC, a panel provided a chance for Prime Ministers Rama of Albania and Mickoski of North Macedonia, as well as EU Enlargement Commissioner Kos, to look forward for the region from what was felt by attendees as a tectonic shift in the global order. 

Rama demonstrated that he is the premier transactional opportunist in the Western Balkans. He attempted to instrumentalize US officials’ statements, calling them “a gift from God” for the EU, advocating that the Union launch a phased accession process and that the “merit-based approach” should only apply to voting in the Union, not membership.

Mickoski made valid points about North Macedonia’s accession having been stunted repeatedly by bilateral disputes led by EU member state pursuing their own narrow agendas. Both leaders engaged in long, self-serving explanatory answers, Rama being far more aggressive, going so far as to chide the moderator for “inviting Balkan men” if she didn’t want long replies.

Kos’ explanation that the enlargement process is confined by the technical structures of the acquis and member state prerogatives was tone-deaf and seemingly untouched by the past decade of lived experience. 

Moderator Majda Ruge’s question on security threats in the region given the shifting American position, for example against secession efforts by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, received no direct answer. And this highlights the failure to date of the EU, as well as its potential to redefine its European security posture. If a geopolitical actor, as it must become to defend itself, it must be capable of implementing area denial – the capability to deny access in a given territory to malign actors. It already has this legal responsibility in Bosnia. 

The EU’s failure to date to convince Bosnian political actors of its commitment was highlighted days after the MSC closed. Following closing arguments in his case before the Court of BiH on February 19 for noncompliance with international High Representative orders, as per the Dayton Accords, Dodik stated that “I’m not threatening anyone, but I’m ready to go all the way” – a clear implication of his long-mooted secession threat. Vučić chimed-in as well, framing Dodik’s violations of the Dayton Accords as a free speech issue, as well as implying that “uncertainty” would follow a guilty verdict. Vučić’s own campaign slogan – “peace and stability” – implied the threat that failure to maintain him in power would precipitate conflict and instability, in true mafia style.

Regional Security – and Democratic Progress – Demands European Leadership

DPC has long advocated closing the deterrence gap in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 20 years ago the EU took on the peace enforcement mandate articulated in the Dayton peace accords. 

No other single act would have greater impact on the political and social dynamic of Bosnia and the region, robbing Dodik of his sole and central prop of his 19-year role – the threat of secession – than if the EU finally took its peace enforcement mandate seriously and engaged in area denial. 

It would also put paid to Serbia’s irredentist regional ambitions, manifest in the Srpski Svet (Serbian World) concept. These ambitions are useful to and aided by Moscow. As Vučić and his centralized rule face a citizens’ movement growing in popularity in Serbia and the region, he relies increasingly on the link with Dodik, his regional agenda, and hostility toward a host of neighbors, especially Kosovo. He has nothing to offer; which is why Serbia’s young people are on the streets.

Given that threats of US withdrawal from NATO’s KFOR were made by envoy for special missions Richard Grenell both in the first Trump term and during the Biden administration, the EU needs to prepare to fill that gap at short notice. Disinformation that the US had activated plans to withdraw its contingent from KFOR circulated widely on February 20, mainly propagated by media connected to Russian, Chinese, or Serbian governments. The possibility of such a withdrawal has indeed been made in the past by Richard Grenell, former US Ambassador to Germany then Balkan envoy in the first Trump administration, now Trump’s envoy for special missions, as well as Donald Trump Jr. But they have not been made since he undertook his new role. 

The EU faces at present Western Balkan leaders who are either committed illiberals or transactionalists. None currently holding the reins of power are genuine exponents of EU foundational values.

It is untenable to rely on such leaders when Europe is simultaneously under existential threat from both East and now West, but also from among illiberally led member states and growing reactionary threats in established democracies. Far from ensuring stability, they profiteer from curated instability as a reliable extractive tool. Europe must disable their capacity to do so. 

Popular Democratic Impulses on the EU Frontiers

The potential for a different Western Balkans has been underscored by Serbia’s student-led nonviolent mobilization – and the broad and heartfelt moral and material solidarity being provided by the broader Serbian and regional populations. This represents a reassertion of collective self-respect after two generations of misrule, with all its aspects of societal degradation.

When Croatians demonstrated in numerous cities – including Vukovar(!) – in support, taxi drivers from Sarajevo, Podgorica, Skopje and elsewhere offered to travel to Kragujevac to transport Serbian students should their Serbian counterparts be overwhelmed by demand, a phenomenon worthy of support. The EU should show similar resolve.

The EU, institutionally established to deal with institutional interlocutors (and whose enlargement process is predicated on the sincerity of their professions of shared values), has been caught flat-footed by this growing civic self-confidence.  But they should not squander this opportunity to support a mass movement in support of its own declared and besieged values.

The performance of US officials in Munich could one day be viewed as the second bookend of the demise of liberal democracy and the trans-Atlantic relationship – with the first being Putin’s performance there in 2007.

However, it does not have to be this way. The sole good outcome of Munich is that Europe’s leaders see that they cannot count on the US as they have for so long. A geopolitically enabled EU can no longer afford to stray from its values. It must defend them materially, both at home and in the enlargement area, while supporting those beyond who share them.  

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1/ The latest chapter in the West’s struggle w/ the ruling elites in #Bosnia and Herzegovina dismantling the rule of law is reaching its endpoint tomorrow…

2/…w/ a final vote by the BiH Parliamentary Assembly’s House of Peoples on an amended Law on the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC).

3/ The background: The HJPC law amendment saga spans half a decade. In 2019, the EU made the HJPC the focus of a push by the @EU_Commission (through the Avis and the Priebe report) to strengthen an independent and accountable judiciary.

4/ The HJPC as the BiH judiciary’s self-managing body established by internationally-backed, post-war judicial reform is a crucial ingredient for this move.

5/ The demise of @MiloradDodik’s man at the head of the Council, Milan Tegeltija, was a first success in that push for reaffirming the HJPC.

6/ A new HJPC law is part of the 14 reform priorities of the Avis, as is amending the HJPC law, focusing on the fight against nepotism and corruption within the HJPC as well as the judiciary overall.

7/ A draft Law on Amendments to the Law on HJPC, in accordance with EU recommendations, supported by the Venice Commission, the OSCE and major Western embassies, and the HJPC itself, was adopted by the previous Council of Ministers of BiH in September 2022.

8/ In May 2023, the new CoM adopted a different version, with several amendments that undermine the Law’s aims to strengthen the integrity, transparency and accountability of the justice sector.

9/ The draft law watered down provisions preventing nepotism within the judiciary. It made the planned HJPC’s authority over asset control of judges and prosecutors dependent on striking MoU’s with entity, cantonal and Brcko district authorities.

10/ In a joint letter to the BiH parliament leadership and heads of all party/peoples’ caucuses of both houses, the heads/ambassadors of the @eubih, @OHR_BiH, @OSCEBiH, @USEmbassySJJ, UK, the Swiss Embassy, and @SwedenBiH…

11/ …strongly pushed back against these changes subverting the original intent of the law, requesting a return to the original draft, and warning of further, negative changes.

12/ The signatories, including EU ambassador @josattler, concluded that changes contrary to the original intent of the draft law “call into question the commitment of their proponents… to the rule of law, and to BiH’s stable and prosperous future.”

13/ Noting that “The European Council’s December 2022 decision to grant BiH candidate status has increased the expectations on the country’s political leaders to deliver on critical reforms such as this” and…

14/ … warning that “efforts to obfuscate this responsibility will impact negatively BiH’s progress towards ist stated goal of European integration.”

15/ Instead of backing down, the ruling SNSD-HDZ-Troika coalition escalated in August. On August 22, the BiH House of Representatives adopted the May CoM draft law, adding further amendments entered at the last minute through parliamentary procedure.

16/ Those final changes further watered down the original intent of the law, making the HJPC’s authority over asset control further dependent on sub-state level laws and bylaws, i.e. putting it at the discretion of entities, cantons and Brcko district.

17/ In a U-turn, @josattler and the @eubih the very same day greeted the adoption, betraying and outmaneuvering their co-signatories of the June 2023 letter.

18/ The entire effort mirrored the well-established pattern of the ruling ethnonationalist elites dismantling the rule of law in BiH for more than a decade:

19/ The @MiloradDodik-@Dragan_Covic tandem, through the HDZ-led BiH justice ministry (minister @BunozaDavor) and the RS justice ministry, in secrecy drafted the law changes making a mockery of its original intent and international obligations and…

20/ …inserting their long-term political project of redefining BiH as a loose union of entities and cantons into the legislation. Plus, hiding the draft from HJPC and the relevant CoM bodies in charge of vetting draft laws (on compliance w/ EU requirements and standards, etc.)…

21/ …thereby undermining the authority of both state-level institutions. The Troika ultimately backed down, confirming that under EU and US pressure it had given up on its democratic values & principles, in return for government participation.

22/ As a high-level Troika representative recently put it to @DPC_global, explaining the parties’ giving in to @OHR_BiH Schmidt’s 10/22 and 4/23 “election law reform” impositions – “don’t expect us to be more European than the EU.”

23/ The EU institutions in the end gave their seal of approval to the dismantling of the rule of law, contrary to official EU policy, standards & reform conditions,…

24/ …oscillating between tacit support (backing down on, lowering conditionality) and – as in the current case – outright collusion.

25/ This is even worse in the current EU BiH policy context: With the 12/22 EU decision to grant candidate status to BiH, despite lack of progress on reform, and the declaring of the post-10/22 election state-level coalition as a reform coalition,…

26/ …EU institutions are now desperate to declare progress ahead of the @EU_Commission BiH country report scheduled for October.

27/ What is playing out on the micro-level in the case of the HJPC Law amendment is part of a broader, dangerous development of EU institutions, the @EU_Commission (partly in cooperation with the minority of illiberal member states)…

28/ … usurping the competences of EU member states in enlargement policy through hijacking the EU’s policy towards candidate countries, moves like the Commission’s 10/22 recommendation on BiH’s candidate status, …

29/ … that served to legitimize the @EU_Commission’s role in pushing for ethnoterritorial division of BiH in the 2021-22 negotiations on so-called election law reforms,…

30/ …a policy based on transactional and/or illiberal agendas that undermines the liberal democratic core of the EU both within and in its external policies.

31/ The HJPC and the @OSCEBiH have both publicly called for the delegates of the HoP of BiH to tomorrow reject the HJPC Law in the version adopted on August 22, and to return to the pre-May 2023 version. @DPC_global calls on them, particularly those from the Troika, to do so.

32/ Western and EU member states, – the US, UK, Germany and France – should publicly speak out today in favour of the HJPC, the rule of law in BiH and EU standards.

33/ Because the next battle for the rule of law and state-level judicial institutions is already around the corner: A draft Law on Courts of BiH (an Avis condition and part of a set of “reform laws”) scheduled by…

34/ …the ruling coalition for adoption in the autumn in the hope that the EU will grant the opening of accession talks in December in return, has been put on the CoM agenda for this Thursday.  

35/ The draft law has been wilfully shielded from public scrutiny, being negotiated between minister Bunoza and Banja Luka in recent weeks.

36/ Adoption of the law, long requested by the EU, had been blocked by the HDZ and SNSD‘s continuous efforts aimed at either eliminating the state-level judiciary jurisprudence over acts against the constitutional order and territorial integrity of BiH, or/and…

37/…a de facto general amnesty for high-level (political) corruption. They were the reasons for the @EU_Commission in 2016 terminating its ill-devised and -managed Structured Dialogue on Judicial Reform.

38/ It also fits a wider pattern of EU Delegations accentuating or outright manufacturing positive developments in order to create the appearance of progress in the enlargement process.

39/ This tendency may advance careers (in the EU and WB6 politics) but sets these countries and societies up for failure.

_______________

Sept. 8, 2023:

Addendum: We owe our readers a small correction: In fact, the September 2022 draft law version of the amendment to the HJPC law, drafted by the BiH Justice Ministry under then minister Grubeša (HDZ), had not been adopted by the previous, outgoing Council of Ministers,…

…as it already contained certain changes, attempts to water down the substance of the original, 2020 draft version, and was thus opposed by relevant Western actors and international institutions.

Those changes undermining the previously ensured substance and EU standards were still minor compared to those undertaken by the current state-level coalition, in close cooperation with the EUD in BiH, since May this year.

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Surviving the Peace: The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Peter Lippman

Vanderbilt University Press

This book, published in 2019, had a long journey to Sarajevo where I awaited a review copy. An initial copy sent by the publisher was lost in transit. A second copy, this time sent to a friend’s office in Zagreb, arrived, but then planned travel and delivery was postponed due to the initial pandemic shutdowns. Then the book gathered dust in a building that was affected during the first wave of earthquakes in Zagreb. The winter 2021 Covid wave led to further travel delays, and so I was delighted to finally get the copy in the first quarter of 2021, more than a year after the first copy had been posted to me.

The timing was worth the wait and fortuitous, for two reasons.

The first reason is personal – this is an excellent book that deserves reading by specialists and newcomers alike. I devoured it in just a few days, pen in hand, reading it at the expense of other tasks.

The second reason is related to the political discourse in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the first half of 2021 as two developments have unfolded, showing that a generation after the end of the war, the international community remains involved in ways that often still reinforce the worst and most divisive inclinations of the country’s leaders. The first was the poorly managed appointment of German politician Christian Schmidt as the next (and many hope, last) High Representative to BiH. The second was the decision by the western international community to press for long-needed constitutional reform/electoral reform, but in a manner that could further empower the voices of political polarization and fragmentation. Reading Lippman’s book is a reminder that from the bottom up, Bosnia and Herzegovina has always been more than the sum of its parts, while the top down calculus inevitably results in a diminution of all.

Lippman is the perfect combination of journalist, researcher, and activist to write a book on this topic. As a highly informed non-scholar he is able to avoid the trap of conceptual frameworks and academic literature reviews, the formulaic nature of which can very often obscure the subject matter at hand. He’s also able to avoid the trap of studied dispassion, in which the efforts to appear unbiased can in fact turn a writer into an unwitting apologist.

His book is the culmination of a more than a quarter century of work in and on Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is nicely structured to ensure both detailed case studies that provide granular and very human details, while demonstrating how these parts interact against the bigger picture local and regional political ecosystem.

Of the many themes around which he could structure a book of this scope he selects the topic of return. In doing so he effectively allows himself a prism through which to understand the human and the political, as the return of people to their pre-war homes – or the decision (personal or socially pressured) to not return – goes to the heart of the demographic cleansing projects that continue to this day.

Following an effective and efficient description of the dynamics of the war – both within BiH and courtesy of BiH’s neighbors Serbia and Croatia, he introduces the topic of return through a series of individual studies and a survey of the broader background of international engagement in implementing the peace agreement. The right to return had been enshrined into the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war, articulated in Annex 7. Unlike more common elements of peace agreements that call for the separation of warring forces (Annex 1) or the provisions for elections (Annex 3), Annex 7 was innovative, guaranteeing the right of people who had been internally displaced or or who became refugees abroad to go back home. This reflected the extent of wartime displacement through both violent and non-violent yet highly coercive pressure that made ethnic cleansing a part of the war, and added a new phrase to the political science lexicon. Inclusion of this Annex was likely a response to western guilt at having stood by as multitudes were physically uprooted at the close of the 20^th century in a Europe that thought it had learned better, and an attempt to “reverse” this human rights abuse. However, it was also reflective of the deals that had to be made to secure signature of one of the representatives of the three warring parties – the leader of the Bosniaks, Alija Izetbegović. Izetbegović was the only negotiator actually from/representing Bosnia, as the others, Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević, were from neighboring Croatia and Serbia respectively, belying the notion that the war in BiH was one that had ever been generated solely from within – something that Lippman explains in simple and effective prose.

The codified promise of the right to return was likely critical for Izetbegović, as Bosniaks – and, in particular, Bosniak civilians – had suffered the brunt of ethnic cleansing. It likely made the legitimization of the Republika Srpska more acidly palatable, as, in theory, the return of heterogeneity to that entity would relegate the gains of that travesty less vivid and meaningful, as people returned, voted, sent their children to school, and started to rebuild.

However, commitment to Annex 7 from the start paled in comparison to the military dedication and precision of Annex 1 fulfillment (which prioritized short-term technical stability at the expense of war crimes accountability), or even Annex 3’s elections (which were quite speedily organized – though highly flawed). The ethnic cleansing so brutally carried out – particularly in the east along the border with Serbia, and in Prijedor (in the north central part of the country, to ultimately create a corridor to connect Serbia with the breakaway Serb province in Croatia’s krajina) – made Annex 7 much more difficult to implement, for reasons of individual security and confidence, as well as higher-level policy and practice. The obstruction to return in the post-war space was evident among all three sides. Lippman describes the post-peace exodus of Serbs from Sarajevo’s suburb of Dobrinja, a final population movement that resulted from both extreme pressure by Serb politicians against “their own,” and made easier by the halfhearted effort to prevent this action by Izetbegović and political allies who had themselves been radicalized towards homogeneity over the course of the war, showing that while the three nationalist political party groupings often seemed to be at loggerheads, they increasingly shared an interest in formalized division. He quotes writer Gojko Berić, who already in 2002 wrote, “What worries me is the gradual drift away of those Bosnians who are committed to Bosnia as a single state, as the homeland of all its people, and who have been with us all these years…….. Many of them have stopped tilting at windmills realizing that the villains have already brought their work to a close in Bosnia” (35).

Yet over the years Lippman stayed in close contact with these individuals facing the entrenched political windmills.  He explains the early struggle of returnees seeking to go back home to Kopači (near Goražde), detailing the political bureaucratic obstructions that made a mockery of Annex 7 and any semblance of a rules-based and accountable governing system. He describes the rise and fall of a return movement of Gacko in the Herzegovina portion of the RS, where property claims were resolved, yet eventually most returnees simply gave up. His survey of return issues in Mostar provides an opportunity to describe the highly organized and orchestrated post-war efforts by Croat nationalists to establish that city as the seat of a Croat entity – an effort to “get their share” that continues to this day in the ongoing US, UK, and EU sponsored talks on the structure of the country’s election and constitutional systems.

His discussion on return in Srebrenica is deep and nuanced, describing the shift from an often forgotten discouragement of return by Bosniak leaders eyeing population consolidation in other places (e.g., formerly Serb-majority communities around Sarajevo such as Vogošća), to the elevation of return to the site of genocide as focus of Bosniak political identity. In addition to reviewing the continuous historical revisionism and genocide denial among the Serbian political elite and the search for justice among survivors through the courts, he also describes the exploitation of tragedy for profit, through “humanitarian profiteering” but even more so by the pervasive corruption that attended hasty and ill thought-out privatization and ongoing manipulation of investments and opportunities. His review of the political economy of both the mines near Sase and the Guber Spa should be required reading for outside financial and business experts seeking to promote investment and understand the investment climate.

Throughout it all he highlights individuals struggling against the odds for the life they want: a return activist in Prijedor, a brave political commentator questioning governance and corruption in the RS, the farming families seeking dignified work in their fields rather than handouts as a displaced “other.” He also moves from this micro detail to macro themes that, if anything, have expanded in scope and prevalence, as the whataboutism and post-truth reality that is shaking the foundation of more consolidated democracies both have deeper roots in BiH and the region, suggesting scope for learning how to resist such corrosive trends.

Reading this book in a steady sitting offers a chance to contextualize present day challenges and agendas with a generation of recent history. It is one thing to know that certain leaders have been active for a long time; it is another to be reminded of the details of their tenure, and the evolution (or consistency) of their political interests. It is also useful to be reminded of the at times contradictory role of international actors in providing vital support to the people Lippman calls the pozitivci through projects and donations, while at the same time providing legitimacy and support to the structural and political forces that work against these very same individuals. Lippman’s book is both a love letter to a country that has, as with so many outsiders, captured his heart and attention, and a written reminder that policies that outsource conscience to a handful of individuals will rarely result in the changes they purport to impact.

The post Tilting at Windmills? Bottom-Up Individuals Trying to Undo the Damage of Top-Down Politics appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

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One can almost begin to put together a sort of glossary:

• Any suggestion about an updated and cogent western (EU+US+UK) strategy is immediately declared an intention to wantonly use the Bonn Powers, or to “bring back Paddy Ashdown.” (This has been disingenuously done in the past as well.) It seems there is little appreciation that there must be other strategic options on the spectrum other than a stale status quo and taking a time machine back to 2004.
• Whenever suggesting that the state of BiH should be “functional,” one is accused of being “unitarist.” Similarly, suggesting that the country be organized in a more rational and cost effective way leads to accusations of “centralization.”
• Use of the terms “civic” or “citizen” is brushed aside as either reflecting a shadow Bosniak nationalist or a naïve utopian agenda. (This has certainly been amplified by SDA’s superficial attempts to misappropriate the “civic” label, through only words, and not policy.) There is little awareness that there is a possibility for a more complex  and layered identity (in spite of a long history of such nuance).
• Social democrats, and social democratic policies = Yugonostalgics/Communists/Sarajevans/Tuzlans; unless of course it’s SNSD and you’re in the RS
• “Powersharing” is good when it is negotiated by the elites and political parties. It’s also good when applied to ethnic “collectivities;” but only if selected collectivities have long been “anchored” to a territory  (e.g.,: German, Italian and Ladino speakers in South Tyrol, or the Flemish, French and German speakers in Belgium). New collectivities (economic migrants, anyone else in Belgium) don’t get this special treatment.
• “Federalism” is good, but in BiH can only apply to ethno-territorial federalism; basically trying to link “blood and soil.” Functional federalism based on geography, proximity, historical ties etc., is apparently not good (see “functional” or “powersharing” above)

This manipulation of language, meaning and possible interpretation seemed familiar, and I realized it reminds me of discussions in the US, where there has often been an interest to divide people into supporting either “big government” or “small government.” According to this trope, Americans either want sprawling governments, a lot of public services, high taxes, and extensive regulations; or they want no/low taxes, minimal public services, and few to no regulations.

This has been a consistent tension in US history, with some recent generational shifts nicely summarized in the book Evil Geniuses and elsewhere. If  you were in the big government camp you gravitated towards the Democrats; the small government campers gravitated towards the Republicans. Until of course they didn’t, as Trump identified the potential in campaigning on economic nationalism and populism (though of course this would have only applied to the people/states that supported him.)

While culture warriors will work to try to keep people polarized over the frivolous and intentionally  provocative, it would be useful to remember that the big government vs. small government duality in the US has always been a false choice.  A good mediator would be able to get all but the most intransigent parties to agree that what most people want is effective government.

In her presidential bid, Senator Elizabeth Warren made this point explicit, stating, “The key question isn’t big government versus small government — it’s who government works for.” As the US starts to turn the massive ship of government from one that gave substantial tax cuts to the rich in 2017, to one that is aiming to provide more relief to the people who have not prospered under the economic policies of the past generation, there will be a fascinating and consequential debate on who government works for in the US. There is no way that this discussion can avoid opening up more discussions on issues of race and structural privilege; such social cleavages could be either cathartic if used to develop more equitable policy, or polarizing if weaponized to promote us vs. them “inat politics.”

How can narratives be transformed in BiH?

Instead of trying to figure out all the ways BiH is like South Tyrol, or on how BiH can “import” from Belgium, Switzerland and the like models for the weakest judiciary, and the weakest tax authority, and the weakest social rights (to create as my colleague Kurt Bassuener has called it a “Frankenstein of worst practices”), why isn’t the first question similar to that asked by Warren in the US: “For whom does the government work in BiH?”

The narratives expanding in recent weeks are aimed at making it easier to forget what government should do for people. It will limit the potential vision, options and discourse by framing everything in the legal language of political science in a way that will benefit the negotiators at the table while marginalizing or ignoring the lived experiences of people who have had to live with the consequences of the false choices presented to them over the last generation.

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This is important for many reasons, but most of all because any new focus on “fixing” BiH, by a newly energized Germany, or a Biden-led Washington DC, cannot pretend to have addressed BiH’s post-war fissures without looking at the educational system that has taken root and continues to do damage to BiH’s human and social capital.

The link between schools, education, curricula, and the prospects for either peace or further social division has been clear since the end of the war. A number of early post-war studies clearly delineated the challenges and risks, and outlined options for reducing the scope of education to contribute to conflict. Many of these were surveyed early on in this 2003 report (by the author). A burst of high-level policy engagement occurred – as with so many other efforts – in the period from around 2001 to 2007. However, meaningful change then stopped.

In conflict management and resolution, there are broadly speaking two main approaches when seeking to resolve large social conflicts. The first can be to tackle the “boulder in the road” – the biggest problem around which all other associated conflicts converge. The second is a more gradual “salami slicing” approach, in which a series of successful smaller engagements can build trust among parties and ease the way to more difficult discussions. Each has pros and cons.

In BiH, efforts to reform education through gradualism has been the predominant method of engagement for a quarter century.

The March 2002 Interim Agreement on Accommodation of the Rights and Needs of Returnee Children was aimed at mitigating the most negative efforts of blatant discrimination, for example, introducing the concept of “two schools under one roof” to allow minority pupils to study in school buildings so they would not have to learn in ad hoc schools in café bars and garages. The concept of the “national group of subjects” was aimed at finding a way to separate the subjects that focus on identity (history, geography, language, religious instruction, etc.) and those that are harder to ethnify (math, science, IT, etc.). While envisioned as a short-term stop-gap among reform-minded outsiders slicing the salami, this has instead turned into social segregation and separation by careful and intentional policy design. The “Interim” Agreement has now been in place and fundamentally unchanged for so long that a generation of children has been conceived, born, schooled, and are now adult citizens.

The boulder remains firmly in the road. Ever thinner and thinner slices of salami give the illusion of progress while contributing nothing to resolution of the broader conflict; in fact the false feeling of accomplishment is damaging as it provides a Potemkin façade of reform.

Every few years (2012, 268 pages; 2018, 60 pages; an additional OSCE report researched in 2020, but not yet published) we see another study to dissect and explain the obvious. But then such reports are followed by mere tinkering, by support for extra-curricular projects and summer camps and NGO initiatives, the hope seemingly being that an hour or two of after-school activities supporting diversity and open-minded critical thinking can counteract the 25-30 hours of formalized instruction that is intentionally structured to do the opposite.

If people are interested in thinking about education again, it is worth dispelling a few myths. The salami slices remaining are already carpaccio-thin, while the boulder has remained in place for so long it has become mossy.

Myth: The Åland Islands and Similar Boutique Rationalizations

When working at the OSCE sometime around 2008 or 2009, I recall a discussion with a diplomat who was suggesting that the educational situation in BiH, including the 2-in-1s, was really no different than what one might see in Finland. I have since heard this argument on other occasions. There is a strong desire by apologists for the status quo to compare bad practice in BiH to “good” practice in other parts of Europe. They often point to the Åland Islands, a cluster of islands that are a part of Finland and where the majority of the population speaks Swedish, having enjoyed substantial autonomy since the League of Nations was involved in this dispute following WWI.

Idiosyncratic and essentialist notions of granular “cultural autonomy” seems to be coming back in fashion, and I suspect we’ll hear more about the Åland Islands, and of course South Tyrol. According to this thinking, why not have pockets of schools in BiH teaching according to pedagogy and content inspired by or fully imported from Zagreb, or Belgrade?

As long as there is heterogeneity in BiH then the level of granularity will vary, depending on the aggressiveness of the parties pushing for more sustained division; or the willingness of minorities and “others” to quietly assimilate to the majority worldview; or the simple pace of people just getting fed up and moving to Germany or Sweden where their kids will grow up with far more diversity than in Central Bosnia canton or the eastern RS. One always returns to the Nadrealisti sketch in which regional politics of ever more granular territorial division played out in rooms in an apartment building.

Yet the key to remember is that it doesn’t matter what is done in Finland. What is happening in BiH now is what matters, and the prolonged life of divided schools and “interim” arrangements means that depending on whether a school is using a Bosniak, a Croat, or a Serb curriculum they are learning different histories, different geographies, and different cultural references. Even more troubling, they are learning that the adults around them cannot find a way to live together; they are learning that is it OK not to engage on common facts; they are learning that there is no need to try to engage with one another. Policy attention on narrow-minded instruction and the promotion of various sets of alternative national facts ensure that modern learning techniques, critical thinking, multiperspectivity, and information literacy are sacrificed in the service of contemporary and instrumentalized tribalism.

Myth: If the 54 “2-in-1s” Disappeared We Could Declare Victory

Since the 2-in-1s were set up as a stop-gap to try to end the practice of minority children being forced to study in café bars or garages, and to get them physically into the schools in their community, they have inevitably become emblematic of the ethno-national division in education in BiH. As noted above, journalists report on it, countless studies focus on it, and it is consistently noted in diplomatic reports and statements and communiques.

However, even if these schools – all in the Federation, where sufficient numbers of Bosniaks and Croats made the phenomenon possible – disappeared, the country would still have exactly as much ethno-nationally inspired segregation. The use of three ethno-national curricula would continue; the practice (particularly common in the RS) of having non-majority kids (e.g., Bosniaks) clustered in poorly equipped “branch schools” rather than in the main school would continue; and the practices of kids learning math and science together but separating from one another for the identity-focused subjects would continue.

The morbid fascination with the 2-in-1s needs to stop – it is only the tip of an iceberg.

Myth: It’s About Choice

I remember sitting with a researcher from BiH nearly 15 years ago, who worked with some mixed local/European “think tanks,” as she sought to persuade me that perhaps the 2-in-1 schools were not emblematic of separation and segregation, but were a sign of a vibrant educational ecosystem in which parents had the luxury of choice. This trope is back, but now in the Twittersphere. This holds as much water as arguments that education segregation in the US South during Jim Crow was about the “choice” of white parents. It is not about choice, but is about policy aimed to divide, to “other,” and to separate.

Myth: This is About Language Rights

As so often happens in BiH, political parties and their associated activists claim that they are simply trying to ensure group rights as constituent peoples. In the educational realm, this is often done with a focus on language, as the right to language in “one’s mother tongue” is proclaimed as inviolable. However, the constituent peoples moniker is sufficiently unique to conveniently permit the flouting of minority rights frameworks that exist to minimize the damage that can be done by either allowing for oppression of minority groups, or enabling the ghettoization of minority clusters outside of mainstream society.

For example, in 1996 the OSCE published The Hague Recommendations Regarding the Education Rights of National Minorities. It is enough to read just the very first point to recognize that in BiH it is not an issue of language rights:

“The right of persons belonging to national minorities to maintain their identity can only be fully realized if they acquire a proper knowledge of their mother tongue during the educational process. At the same time, persons belonging to national minorities have a responsibility to integrate into the wider national society through the acquisition of a proper knowledge of the State language.”

Experts largely agree that the language variants spoken by people throughout BiH – formerly called Serbo-Croatian – are sufficiently mutually comprehensible to be variations of the same language. This was of course vigorously contested in responses that everyone in the region could easily read and understand. Variations that exist are, if anything, linked more to regional identity/locale than anything else.

Finally, in addition to being toxic in BiH, the tolerance for such political manipulation has the potential to spread. A few years ago, I spoke with a prominent member of the Serbian community in Novi Pazar, who bemoaned that his daughter could not study her preferred secondary school course in the Serbian language in that city, as it was available only in Bosnian. If such separation-focused policies are legitimized in one country, there should be little surprise if they seep over and are used elsewhere, to detrimental social effect.

Myth: Extra-institutional Projects, Math and IT will be Enough

Diplomats and donors keen to slice away at the salami have initiated countless projects aimed at improving the quality of education, or offering elective extra-curricular opportunities to kids receiving a sub-standard education in the course of the formal compulsory schooling. There is an understandable hope that a focus on quality, and a focus on subjects such as math and IT, will chip away at these issues; that parents, getting a taste of quality education in non-identity subjects, will come to demand similar quality in the more sensitive “national” subjects.

This has been tried for years. Since 2006, the United World College program and International Baccalaureate in the historically prominent Mostar Gymnasium has aimed to demonstrate that a high-quality, diverse, international program within a 2-in-1 would inevitably pull parents to demand the same for their kids. That reform spillover did not happen because policymakers didn’t allow such an outcome. In the mid-2000s, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) sought to incentivize joint learning by providing modern IT curriculum and equipment for mixed-group classes. That did not spill over. From 2016-2018 USAID promoted a STEM initiative, with the assumption that, “Strengthening key STEM competencies among students and their teachers is central to improving the system as a whole.” There is no evident spillover.

There is hope against hope that a handful of extracurricular activities or “pilot projects” will create momentum for broader systemic change. However, there is nothing to suggest this will happen in the absence of more effective pressure on those actors who want to maintain social division. Instead this demonstration of salami slicing can have detrimental effects: it very much favors those geographic locations most targeted by international donors; it allows outside actors to be relieved that they are doing “something;” and it provides external infusions of money to support a status quo that donors purport to want to change. Yet nearly two decades of such engagement have led to no educational breakthrough, and have further cemented BiH’s political dynamics into one that at best resembles a frozen conflict, and at worst is changing the structure of the conflict by actively deepening and compounding social fissures.

The post The Myth of Incremental Education Reform in BiH appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.

by Bodo Weber

Executive Summary

Last June, the ambassadors of the European Union and the US to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), together with the UK ambassador to BiH, struck a deal on Mostar with the main Croat and Bosniak parties, the Croatian Democratic Union of BiH (HDZ BiH) and the Party of Democratic Action (SDA). The agreement ended a ten-year deadlock on implementation of a Constitutional Court of BiH (CC BiH) ruling that suspended the Election Law of BiH and provisions in the Mostar city statute that regulated local elections on the grounds they were discriminatory, and returned the right to vote to the Herzegovinian city’s citizens, who on December 20 will vote for the first time in 12 years to elect their local representatives. The deal was praised by the West as a major breakthrough, a long-awaited return of local elites to a policy of compromise, and even an expression of a “thriving democracy.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The agreement is an exercise in muddling-through, a transactional bargain between the Western negotiators and the leaders of the HDZ and SDA, Dragan Čović and Bakir Izetbegović, that signs off on the ethno-territorial division of Mostar after 25 years of international efforts towards reunification of the once multi-ethnic city that was divided during the Bosnian war. Even worse, the deal contains a major Western concession to Čović’s long-standing project of creating a de jure or de facto third entity designed to conceal the disintegration of the country. The Mostar deal is just the latest chapter in a decade and a half of a failed Western BiH policy with the EU formally and jealously in the lead, further aggravated over the last several years by the accelerating crisis of the West’s global role, and of liberal democracy in the West – on both sides of the Atlantic. It bears all the hallmarks of that combination: no strategy, no leadership, no (serious) defense of the values and principles of liberal democracy or of the core principles that guided the West’s Balkan policy of the last three decades and no adherence to the lessons learned from it.

The Mostar deal is in fact a set of three agreements: The first, an amendment to the Election Law of BiH, formally replaces the discriminatory provisions and regulations in the election law and in Mostar’s city statute that regulated local elections in Mostar, and which were suspended by the CC BiH in 2010. The second, an amendment to the existing 2004 city statute, establishes a new HDZ-SDA power-sharing arrangement based on the ethno-territorial division of Mostar, by shifting the city’s power center to a semi-formal governance level below the central level, in the form of so-called city areas – which are also electoral districts for the city council elections. This arrangement defies all principles of democracy, rule of law and local self-governance. Even worse, it renders the return of the right to vote to Mostar’s citizens moot, and establishes new forms of discrimination. With the third agreement, the West has for the first time given the seal of approval to HDZ’s terminology “legitimate political representation of constituent peoples,” – a means by which Čović’s generational project to establish a de facto third, Croat entity in BiH may enter through the back door of electoral system reform – and put pressure on the SDA to do the same.

The Mostar deal rests on three transactional foundations: It was the first international negotiation on Mostar with no defined political principles and aims; it was the first negotiation on Mostar conducted with only two of the nine political parties of Mostar; and it was a bargain for the HDZ and SDA in which the West got one agreement (on the electoral law) in return for accepting two others, negotiated between the two parties with almost no intervention by the West.

Since the deal was signed, it has been met with criticism. Western actors have begun to seek a way out of a mess of their own making. Western capitals have shifted blame onto their negotiators in Sarajevo. In turn, the negotiators have looked to the Mostar actors they have betrayed – opposition parties, civil society actors, and citizens – to help them out of their predicament by voting in the elections on December 20 and preventing the two-thirds majority win for HDZ-SDA needed to adopt the new statute. In the meantime, negotiations over the third agreement have stalled, leaving open the possibility the entire deal will collapse in the end.

There is hope for a U-turn on Western BiH policy: First, in the European Commission’s May 2019 Avis that presents the outlines of an initial masterplan for a long-term, strategic policy on BiH of the EU and the wider West based on conditionality for comprehensive, structural reform, with constitutional change at its core (but that has not yet been followed up by the member state governments); and second, in the impending inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden in January 2021 and the potential for change that it represents. But first, the damage that the Mostar deal has inflicted upon Mostar, the Federation of BiH, the country as a whole, and to Western policy towards BiH must be addressed.

Recommendations

For immediate damage control

To Mostar citizens:

• Mostar voters need to save their city from ethno-territorial disintegration by voting on December 20 for any party or independent candidate except HDZ and SDA, thus denying them the two-thirds majority they need to adopt the draft city statute.

To the West:

• Key EU member states such as Germany need to seize leadership on the Mostar issue post-election, push for an EU position against the new city statute, and re-define/establish red lines against the ethnic disintegration of Mostar and the Čović-HDZ project that is behind the political agreement on changing the electoral system.
• The incoming Biden administration needs to reverse the policy pursued by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Palmer of appeasing the nationalist parties, join the EU in re-defining/establishing red lines on Mostar and electoral reform, and refrain from any past inclination towards the “need to give something to the Croats” (i.e., the HDZ BiH). It needs to refrain from rushing to achieve any quick deliverables under newly established US leadership, but instead work in close cooperation with the EU.
• The EU and the US should refrain from engaging in negotiations on the implementation of Sejdić-Finci and other court rulings until they define a joint, strategic policy that aims to move BiH out of its trajectory of accelerating regression.

For the longer term

• The EU and the US need to start an initiative on a long-term comprehensive BiH policy that puts constitutional change at its core with comprehensive conditionality, by turning the EC Avis and the Priebe report into a master plan, using the international community’s Dayton instruments to create a conducive environment for reform, and preventing further deterioration of the political and security situation in BiH.

Read the full paper

The post The West’s Dirty Mostar Deal: Deliverables in the Absence of a BiH Policy appeared first on Democratization Policy Council.