The Prime Minister of Republika Srpska, Radovan Višković, stated in Banja Luka that he cannot accept measures that would abolish the competencies of Srpska in the negotiations on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s path to the EU.
- As long as I am the Prime Minister of Srpska, I cannot accept these three measures – the abolition of the entity veto, the introduction of a call center at the BiH level, and the filling of the BiH Constitutional Court with domestic judges instead of our proposal to replace foreign judges with local ones. By this, Srpska is not hindering BiH’s European path, but unfortunately, such demands are an imposition on Republika – Višković said.
The Prime Minister of Srpska assessed that everything done in recent years on the European path has a certain degree of insincerity.
- Attempts are being made to push through something that has nothing to do with the European path through economic measures, which is largely political – Višković said.
He emphasized that the European Commission had 113 measures for BiH related to the Growth Plan.
- Thanks to Republika Srpska, only three measures remained unresolved. At all meetings, there was encouragement to reach some consensus to achieve a compliance rate higher than 95 percent, which we achieved – Višković said.
Višković specified that it was not agreed that there should be one center for all services at the BiH level because it is not in accordance with the Constitution.
- This means that someone who needs the help of firefighters or police should call Sarajevo. Isn’t it logical for our proposal to have two call centers, one in Srpska and the other in the Federation of BiH – Višković said.
According to him, the second unresolved measure concerns the filling of the BiH Constitutional Court and that the decisions of that court should be binding throughout BiH.
- I asked what we will do with decisions that are not respected throughout BiH. Do you know that there are more unimplemented decisions of the Constitutional Court in the Federation of BiH than in Srpska? Our proposal was to pass a law on the Constitutional Court and elect domestic judges who will decide by consensus – Višković said.
The Prime Minister of Srpska noted that the third unresolved measure is the abolition of the entity veto.
- Initially, they said this should be in some services dealing with state aid. In this case, there is hardly anyone naive in Srpska who would sign such a measure, as it would essentially mean the abolition of Srpska. For the price of European millions or billions, which I think they do not have, I cannot accept decisions that seek to abolish the competencies of Srpska in a perfidious and political way – Višković is categorical.
He recalled that during the negotiation process with the EU, there were assurances that if 95 percent of the measures were agreed upon, funding would be provided in that proportion from the planned billion euros.
- Therefore, I said we have agreed on the majority, so give us that much money. Then they informed us that they could not go below these three unresolved measures and that this was a red line and a condition for the Growth Plan and EU aid to BiH. That’s why I said if that is the condition, there is no need for further talks – Višković concluded.
Source: RTRS
