The atmosphere in the EU is much more friendly towards enlargement, and Bosnia-Herzegovina should seize the historic opportunity, visiting Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said on Monday.
On his first trip to the Western Balkans since taking office last May, Golob said Slovenia was ready to be Bosnia’s “biggest ally and provide technical and financial aid” but also invest, particularly in renewable energy projects.
“I want to tell my interlocutors here that the atmosphere in Brussels has changed and that this is a historic opportunity for you,” Golob told a press conference after meeting Bosnian leaders.
“Over the last 20 years, the enlargement process was stopped on technical and administrative issues, but enlargement is today a political issue and Bosnia-Herzegovina should take advantage of that”.
Bosnia and Herzegovina became an EU candidate in December, on the understanding that it now must demonstrate progress in implementing economic and political reforms and overcoming ethnic differences that still simmer after the 1992-95 war.
However, the country, divided into two highly autonomous entities, the Serb Republic and the Bosniak-Croat Federation, remains highly dysfunctional, with various parties in the Federation still struggling to form the government there following the October 2022 elections.
Borjana Krišto, who chairs the country’s council of ministers, a weak central government, said the council’s focus is “precisely on European reforms, and the council has already taken some steps, with the reform of the public administration and internal market, and the competitiveness of infrastructure projects”.
(Zoran Radosavljević | EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
