Bosnia-Herzegovina obtained candidate status for membership of the European Union last December. But the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has once again ruled that Bosnia-Herzegovina favors ethnic groups, and that the elections there are undemocratic.
Aline Cateux is an anthropologist and correspondent for the daily “Le Soir”, in Sarajevo, she is the guest of European microphone.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country with three peoples. Together they are called Bosnians, but there are three peoples: Bosniaks – Muslims – Croats, Serbs – Catholics and Orthodox. Only these three peoples can be represented in the upper house, and the country is made up of two territories, that of the Bosniaks and the Croats, and that of the Serbs, the Republika Srpska, and the three ethnic groups, each have their president, we call that’s a tripartite presidency.
Bosnia-Herzegovina obtained candidate status for membership of the European Union last December. However, a Bosnian took the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. His name is Slaven Kovačević, because he doesn’t feel represented.
franceinfo: The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that Bosnia-Herzegovina favored ethnic groups, and that the elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina are undemocratic?
Aline Cateux: This is the sixth time that the European Court of Human Rights has condemned Bosnia and Herzegovina, either because its constitution is considered discriminatory – the Constitution directly resulting from the Dayton agreements – or because the rights of minorities are violated, for example because they are Jewish and they are Roma. Therefore, they cannot access the functions of the House of Peoples and the presidency of the country, since they do not have the right to do so according to the Constitution. Only the three constituent peoples can claim it.
franceinfo: As we recall, the Dayton agreements date from 1995, and since then, Bosnia-Herzegovina has had a high international representative who is in charge of the Dayton agreements.
Yes thats exactly it.
So Bosnia Herzegovina is shaken because it had obtained candidate status for membership in the European Union last December, it is another European institution which is kicking in.
Yes, the ECHR is right. Concretely, Bosnia and Herzegovina has made absolutely no progress towards obtaining this candidate status.
Today, after this decision by the European Court, how does Europe react? How is the international community reacting?
The international community is absolutely trying to discredit and in fact suppress the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the case Kovačević, by saying that what took precedence was still the functionality of the State, that we were making some progress in this candidate status, to meet the conditions imposed by the European Union.
So ultimately, this case of the European Court of Human Rights is itself buried by the European representation here, which reacted extremely coldly, in fact, to this decision, which is not the last. And the United States and Great Britain obviously followed in the footsteps of the European delegation to say that yes, well, the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights were all well and good, but that on the ground , it could also happen differently.
How do we experience this throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina?
Compared to the case Kovačević , it still caused a lot of talk, given that it comes on top of the fact that we know that the elections are manipulated. We know that the electoral commission is in the hands of the political parties, and that there is a certain number of frauds which have been passed over in silence.
So, the fact of being recognized by an institution as important and as prestigious as the in some way makes it clear that people have been heard, too, in their demand for more equality.
In reality, Bosnians are beginning to realize that their interests are all the same, namely being able to educate their children, receive normal health care, have access to a job without the need to belong to a political party or to belong to a ethnic group…
Between the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the reactions of the international community and the European Union, the Bosnians in all of this?
The Bosnians do not have many illusions. I think that it has been a while since they have stopped counting on the European Union, nor on their leaders, nor on the embassies to settle their affairs and obtain their rights. I think that while people are grateful to the European Court of Human Rights for having in fact recognized the discriminatory and undemocratic regime of elections, I think that Bosnians are absolutely aware that this decision of the ECHR does not will have absolutely no consequences here, and that it will not be implemented, like all the other decisions of the ECHR previously.