European Commission Recommends Bosnia and Herzegovina to Start EU Accession Talks
The European Commission today recommends that Bosnia and Herzegovina start accession talks with the EU. This comes eight years after this Western Balkan country applied for membership in the bloc. The decision was announced by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
"Today we will decide to recommend to the Council to open accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina. The message coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina is clear. Our message must therefore be clear as well. The future of Bosnia and Herzegovina is in our Union," said the President of the European Commission, announcing the decision of her executive on Tuesday morning in a speech to the European Parliament.
"Since we granted candidate status, Bosnia and Herzegovina has taken impressive steps forward. More progress has been made in just one year than in more than a decade. Of course, more progress is needed to join our Union. But the country is demonstrating that it can fulfil the criteria for membership and the aspirations of its citizens to be part of our family," von der Leyen added.
The Commission's recommendation must be endorsed by all 27 EU leaders, who are due to take a decision at a summit next week in Brussels.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was granted EU candidate status in December 2022. It is one of five countries in the Western Balkans recognised as official candidates for EU membership.
Until now, it was the only one of these countries that had not yet started formal accession negotiations.
The obstacles were "deep-rooted ethnic divisions and delays in constitutional, judicial and electoral reforms".
Before Bosnia can move forward, it needs to see further constitutional and electoral reforms and better alignment with EU foreign policy, the European Commission said in its annual assessment of the progress of EU candidate countries released last October.
First and foremost, the EU executive was concerned about the way Republika Srpska, one of the country's two ethnically Serb entities, advocated a neutral stance on Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine.
Just last month, Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik held his fourth meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Today, however, von der Leyen assured that "Bosnia and Herzegovina is now fully aligned with our foreign and security policy, which is crucial in times of geopolitical upheaval."
Many EU countries, called "friends of Bosnia," have called on the EU to move Bosnia on its membership path at the same pace as Ukraine. Among them are Austria, Croatia, Italy, Hungary and Slovenia.
Russia's military invasion of Ukraine has given impetus to the future enlargement of the European Union. The integration of the Western Balkan states in this enlargement is important for strengthening the geopolitical relevance of the bloc.