EU-lidmaatschap Bosnië verder weg na weigering Bosnisch parlement om politie te reorganiseren (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Bosnia's long journey to EU membership on Wednesday suffered a major setback on Wednesday (14 September) as the Bosnian Serb parliament voted down a key police law necessary to start official talks with Brussels on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement.

The parliament of the Republika Srpska, the ethnic Serb entity within Bosnia-Herzegovina, by a large majority rejected an EU plan for police reform which would allow police forces to cross the border between the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat part of the country.

The acceptance by all entities in Bosnia of the police plan has been repeatedly mentioned by the European Commission as a strong precondition for the country to start talks on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with Brussels.

Enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn i stated: "it is now clear that Bosnia and Herzegovina will not be able to start negotiations on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the European Union this year."

The talks on this agreement - a contractual relationship with Brussels containing economic and political clauses - precede any negotiations on fully fledged EU membership.

"The reform of the police is the last important stumbling block for SAA negotiations to start", commissioner Rehn said.

The deadline put to the Bosnians by the commission to greenlight the EU's police scheme had been on 16 September, in two days time.

Authorities in Brussels and Sarajevo had hoped to symbolically open the SAA talks ten years after the signing of the Dayton Peace agreement in 1995.

"I regret that the chance to celebrate ten years of peace by opening a new phase of European future has now been lost", Commissioner Rehn said.

The war, which ravaged the country from 1992 to 1995, claimed 200,000 lives.

Crime-fighting also gets blow

Zinaiba Ilaria, working for the Police Mission of the EU in Bosnia, said that she was "very very disappointed" with Bosnian Serb resistance to the reform, also from a Bosnian citizens' point of view.

She said the reform would have enabled Bosnian police forces to work professionally - for example by not regarding internal border lines in the country while chasing criminals.

"This is what you would need to fight organised crime", she stated.

Ms Ilaria added that another reason for the Bosnian Serb rejection had been that according to the police reform, the competence and budget of police policy would be transferred to the state (national) level.

It would deprive the authorities in Banja Luka - the Republika Srpska's government seat - from its sovereignty over interior matters.