SARAJEVO, 23 Jan: The European Commission chief and the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Croatia told Bosnia on Tuesday to press on with reforms and seize a chance to begin accession negotiations with the European Union before the 27-nation block holds a parliamentary vote in June.
\nThe three officials said at a news conference in Sarajevo that while Bosnia has made progress in achieving the criteria to formally start the talks, the troubled Balkan nation must do more to win a positive recommendation in March from the European Commission.
\n\u201cWe have seen some progress, we have seen a real commitment to the accession goal with important laws adopted,\u201d said Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president. \u201cAnd the more you deliver, the more convincing you are and the better it is, the more you help me to produce a report that reflects this movement forward.\u201d
\nBosnia was granted candidate status in 2022 and the European Council said last year that the accession negotiations can start once the necessary degree of compliance is achieved. There will be \u201cno shortcuts\u201d for Bosnia, said Dutch caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
\n\u201cEU accession has to be and always will be a merit-based process,\u201d Rutte said. \u201cUnfortunately, at the moment … we have to see what happens in the next six weeks.\u201d
\nBosnia is among the six Western Balkan nations that have been seeking EU entry following a period of wars and crisis in the 1990s. The process was stalled for years but Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has rekindled the prospects. EU officials are now offering a 6 billion euro ($6.4 billion) package for Western Balkan countries to encourage reform.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a huge opportunity to increase the prosperity of this country,\u201d von der Leyen said. Bosnia, she said, could expect 1 billion euros in funds from the package when it carries out necessary economic reforms.
\nReform laws that Bosnia still needs to pass to begin the accession talks relate to fighting corruption and money laundering, judicial reform and the rule of law. Bosnian Prime Minister Bojana Kristo promised \u201cwe will remain focused and work hard\u201d to achieve the goals.
\nBosnia is still ethnically divided and politically unstable long after the 1992-95 war that left more than 100,000 people dead and displaced millions. Pro-Russian Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has repeatedly threatened secession of the Serb-run half of the country from the rest of Bosnia.
\nWestern officials fear that Russia could try to stir instability in Bosnia and the rest of the Balkans to divert attention from its attacks on Ukraine. They have said that stepping up the bloc\u2019s engagement with Western Balkans nations is more crucial than ever to maintaining European security. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SARAJEVO, 23 Jan: The European Commission chief and the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Croatia told Bosnia on Tuesday to press on with reforms and seize a chance to begin accession negotiations with the European Union before the 27-nation block holds a parliamentary vote in June. The three officials said at a news conference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-233127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}