One more step towards joining the EU. The leaders of the countries of the European Union gave the green light on Thursday March 21 to the opening of accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, which will only begin once this Balkan country has achieved a certain number of reforms.

"Congratulations! Your place is in our European family. Today's decision is a key step in your path to the EU. Now the difficult work must continue," European Council President Charles Michel said on the network x.

The European Council has just decided to open accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Congratulations!



Your place is in our European family.



Today's decision is a key step forward on your EU path. Now the hard work needs to continue so Bosnia and Herzegovina… pic.twitter.com/LyotNa5gGc

— Charles Michel (@CharlesMichel) March 21, 2024

This decision by the Twenty-Seven, meeting at a summit in Brussels, is the latest in a movement towards EU enlargement which has gained strength since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

“Based on the Commission's recommendation of 12 March 2024, the European Council decides to open accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina,” reads the joint statement adopted by the leaders.

The latter invite “the Commission to prepare the negotiation framework with a view to its adoption by the [European] Council when all the appropriate measures set out in the Commission recommendation of October 12, 2022 have been taken”.

Discussions can only begin after all member state governments have agreed to this negotiating framework.

Strengthening the rule of law

Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country of 3.5 million inhabitants, obtained candidate status in 2022 after the favorable opinion of the Commission, which had identified 14 “essential priorities” for reforms. These consist in particular of improving the functioning of central institutions, strengthening the rule of law and fundamental rights, and developing the fight against corruption and organized crime in this country, one of the poorest in Europe.

Bosnia recently opened negotiations for a cooperation agreement with the European border guard agency Frontex, its Parliament adopted an anti-money laundering law demanded by Brussels as well as a law on conflict prevention interests in institutions. But there is still no agreement on the reform of the courts and on the electoral law.

Bosnia remains very divided after the intercommunal conflict which devastated this former Yugoslav Republic and left more than 100,000 dead.

Nearly thirty years after the Dayton Accords, which ended this conflict in 1995, the country is divided into two: a Serbian entity, the Republika Srpska (RS), regularly accused of playing into the hands of Moscow in the region, and another Croat-Bosnian, whose leaders want the country to join NATO.

Also read “We do not have the same version of History”: in Bosnia, young people still remain divided

“Impressive progress”

The country is facing a political crisis due to secessionist threats from Bosnian Serbs.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, recommended in March the opening of accession negotiations with this country, welcoming its “impressive progress”.

She notably stressed that it was now "fully aligned" with the EU's foreign and security policy, "which is crucial in these geopolitically troubled times".

The opening of negotiations is a step in a process which generally takes many years before accession.

Such accession negotiations have also been opened with Serbia, Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia.

With AFP

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