She said that after the consultations, SNSD president Milorad
Dodik will take part in a meeting and activities which will be led by
the EU Special Representative and the Head of the EU Delegation to BiH,
Peter Sorensen.
“According to the announced concept, meetings with all parliamentary
parties are planned in order to arrive at a political agreement by the
end of March,” Cvijanovic added.
She said that the positions of all ruling and opposition parties in
Republika Srpska were harmonised long time ago and that it is very
important that there exists absolute agreement.
“This should be a model for every other important issue, as well as
for the European road as a whole. Hoping that these issues will be
resolved quickly, the SNSD presented its view even before this court
ruling was brought and presented three years ago. Last year, all
political parties from Republika Srpska agreed that this proposal
achieves the goal set by the court ruling, and this became and remained
the single position of Republika Srpska political parties,” Cvijanovic
said.
She said that, dissatisfied with the dynamics in implementing the
Sejdic-Finci ruling, the failure to implement which represents a formal
obstacle to filing application for membership and thus to getting a
candidate status, the EU launched talks with political parties in order
to arrive at a political agreement on this issue by the end of March,
“which paves the way to putting into force the Stabilisation and
Association Agreement and to suppositions for filing application for
membership later in the year.”
Cvijanovic said that it is necessary to harmonise the Constitution
and the Election Law with the European Convention on Human Rights before
the 2014 general elections, since otherwise these elections might be
marked as elections not conducted in keeping with international
standards.
“One should bear in mind that the obligation to erase discriminatory
provisions from the BiH Constitution regarding running for the BiH
Presidency and representation of minorities in the BiH House of Peoples
is one of the post-accession obligations of BiH towards the Council of
Europe, and that it was later assumed from the EU and was clearly cited
in the preamble to the Stabilisation and Association Agreement. For this
reason, the obligation to implement the Sejdic-Finci ruling was clearly
defined in the Brussels Road Map of last June as a precondition for
filing a credible application, and this means for further progress on
the European road,” Cvijanovic said.
In order for the Stabilisation and Association Agreement to be able
to fully go into force, which is now the case only in its trade section
in the form of a provisional agreement, Cvijanovic said that it is
necessary to establish a functional, completely operative coordination
model which will guarantee the implementation of all contractual
obligations, as well as organised, constitutional behaviour by all
government levels in the European phases which will follow and which
pertain to the questionnaire and to the far more demanding part of the
job BiH will face once accession negotiations start in keeping with the
negotiating chapters.
“Because of the importance of coordination, this issue was, together
with the implementation of the Sejdic-Finci ruling, also defined in the
Road Map,” Cvijanovic said.
She concluded that all this is happening with great delay, since it
was planned for BiH to implement the Sejdic-Finci ruling by the end of
the last year and establish a coordination mechanism, after which it
should have applied for membership in the EU.
“This issue was addressed in an inadequate manner and this is why it
was left unresolved for so long a time. We should learn a lesson from
this, namely, that reality should always be taken into account when
resolving important issues, and the European road is such a one,”
Cvijanovic said.
She said that the SNSD is of the opinion that this issue should be
resolved as soon as possible and the European road de-blocked, as well
as that the resolution of this issue was unnecessarily dragged out,
which created space for various political games and ambitions which do
not have much to do with the essence of the ruling itself, which orders
the removal of discriminatory provisions from the Constitution when it
comes to running for the BiH Presidency and the representation of
minorities in the BiH House of Peoples.
“These are in fact the main messages of the SNSD – quick resolution
of the problem and keeping to the essence of the ruling. If some
continue with various revisionist ideas regarding the Dayton foundations
or with ambitions about a great unravelling of the Constitution, this
can only further block the European road, and we in the SNSD do not want
to believe that this is in anyone’s interest,” Cvijanovic said.
She said that the question of whether a solution should be symmetric
or asymmetric was artificially imposed, adding that this is but an
imaginary dilemma, since BiH is full of examples of asymmetry in
organisational, territorial and administrative-political terms.
“If the FBiH is constitutionally recomposed, asymmetry between the
two Entities will still be present, since the Cantons not only will not
disappear as a category, but rather are supposed to have a real place in
the European integration process. If this is true for the District of
Brcko, then it is certainly true for the Cantons, having in mind the
competencies at their disposal. The most important thing is to remove
the formal obstacle to filing application and to arrive quickly at
amending the Constitution in keeping with the Sejdic-Finci ruling,”
Cvijanovic has concluded.
(Srna/Frotnal)
