The EU is appeasing the unappeasable in Bosnia

The EU and the US may at last have similar ideas on how to deal with Bosnia, but the result is a shameful mess.

For the past few years, the United States and the European Union have routinely disagreed on the future of international involvement in the domestic affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Where the EU took the view that the pull of eventual Union membership would prove strong enough to maintain momentum for reform in Bosnia, the US appeared inclined to preserve a certain coercive capacity in the office of the international high representative, or OHR. In the last few months, the US has fallen into line with the EU, under the leadership of Sweden, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency. The result has been an unmitigated disaster.

In its October progress report on Bosnia, the European Commission for the first time spelled out which specific features of Bosnia’s constitution prevented the country from advancing in its membership bid. The Commission concluded that the constitution, part of the 1995 Dayton peace accords, hands the three national communities – Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Serbs and Croats – excessive veto powers over almost all aspects of political life. But any hopes that this diagnosis might be a first step towards a cure were dashed when Sweden, under its indefatigable foreign minister, Carl Bildt, rushed Bosnian party leaders into badly prepared talks on constitutional amendments in October, known as the ‘Butmir process’, after the military base where the talks were held. Bildt, who had been the very first high representative in Bosnia in 1995-97, wanted to declare the mission accomplished – to close down the OHR and withdraw EU peacekeepers.

The Bosnian Serbs under Milorad Dodik, prime minister of the semi-autonomous Republika Srpska, made it clear that they were not prepared to give up their veto rights in favour of a stronger central government (whose prime minister is from Dodik’s party). In response, the Swedes simply dropped the issue from the proceedings. The talks collapsed anyway, with all sides rejecting even modest modifications to the current set-up. The EU and the US nonetheless suggested that they had found a “broadly shared agreement” in favour of further Euro-Atlantic integration.

The EU presidency and the Commission had gambled high, and lost. Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for enlargement, threatened that Bosnia would be stuck indefinitely in the EU’s waiting-room if it did not grab the opportunity. But at the same time he held out the prospect of visa-free travel for Bosnian citizens as a reward for good behaviour. This contradicted years of insistence by Rehn and his officials that the steps towards EU membership would be decided by objective, technical criteria rather than any short-term political pressures. All of a sudden, everything seemed to be up for grabs. The talks also completely sidelined Valentin Inzko, the EU’s special envoy and the international high representative.

Last week things became even worse for Inzko. He met Catherine Ashton, the EU’s newly appointed foreign policy chief, on Thursday (10 December) to get her support for a move that was certain to provoke the Bosnian Serbs.

For months, the Bosnian Serbs had prevented the country’s authorities from extending the contracts of international judges and prosecutors working in Bosnia’s highest court – now numbering just 11. The last contract was to expire on Tuesday (15 December). Inzko explained to Ashton, and also to diplomats from the countries that oversee the OHR’s work, that he would have to impose an extension. A confidential analysis prepared by the OHR’s lawyers concluded that this was “the only way” to “protect the rule of law” in Bosnia. A former high representative said that imposing an extension of the judicial contracts was “vital” to protect the “entire international investment” in Bosnia of the last several years.

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But Inzko was told that imposing an extension of the judges’ contracts was out of the question because nobody had the appetite for a confrontation with Dodik. (It turned out that Canada, Japan and Turkey did – but that was of little interest to the EU.) The international judges and prosecutors working on organised crime and corruption cases in Bosnia would lose their jobs on 15 December – and they did. Inzko was allowed to extend only the contracts of international judges and prosecutors working on war crimes, an issue that is of far less personal interest to Dodik and other Bosnian politicians.

Jelko Kacin, a liberal Slovenian MEP, called the decision not to extend the contracts of corruption prosecutors and judges “shocking” and its damage to the EU’s standing “intolerable”.

Ashton and Rehn “welcomed” the OHR’s decision and called on Bosnia to take action against corruption and organised crime. Dodik announced that the decision to extend the war-crimes judges’ contracts carried no weight and might be subject to a referendum in the Republika Srpska.

For the second time in as many months, the EU, together with the US, had tried to appease Dodik, only to find him unappeasable. There could hardly have been a less auspicious start to Ashton’s term of office.