Bosnia moves closer to EU membership

Bosnia and Herzegovina has taken a ‘new step towards its European future’ with the initialling of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), which is set to provide closer ties with the EU and trade benefits for the Western Balkan state.

“The agreement we initialled today brings concrete benefits to the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said at the occasion in Sarajevo on Tuesday (4 December). He added: “The SAA is also the gateway to candidate status, provided the agreement is properly implemented.”

The agreement was reached after a political deal on police reform was struck. Police forces in the Western Balkan country are ethnically divided into Bosnia’s two regions, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb Republika Srpska.

The implementation of the police reform is also a condition for the full signing of the SAA expected in mid-2008.

The EU’s Special Representative in Bosnia, Miroslav Ljcak, said: “The initialling may sound technical, but it’s of great symbolic importance, after months of political paralysis”. With the initialling of the SAA, the EU also hopes to increase the stability of the region, which faces uncertainty after talks over the future status of Kosovo failed.

UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte on Tuesday urged the EU not to sign the SAA with Serbia, unless alleged war criminals, including Ratko Mladic, are delivered to The Hague. Del Ponte said that it was “very important that the EU is helping us to obtain full cooperation” with the ICTY. The Union had already initialled the SAA with Serbia on 7 November this year.

Del Ponte is to report to the UN on Serbia’s cooperation with the war crimes tribunal on 10 December, the same day that the international troika leading the talks between Serbia and Kosovo over its future status will deliver its report to the UN.

The EU is still divided on whether to recognise a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo, which is looming after final talks between the parties failed. Kosovo will also figure high on the agenda of next week’s meeting of EU foreign ministers, but diplomats are not expecting a breakthrough so soon.

Read more with Euractiv

Kosovo warned not to declare independence unilaterally

EU foreign ministers on Monday (19 November) sent out a warning to the newly elected Kosovo leader Hashim Thaci not to declare independence unilaterally next month.