Question to Commissioner-designate Stefan Fule (enlargement and neighbourhood policy) about Bosnia

Speech by Sarah Ludford MEP delivered to Commissioner-Designate Stefan Fule on Wed 13th Jan 2010

I am now going to give you the chance to specifically talk about Bosnia. Last year a US academic charged that the EU lacked a viable policy towards Bosnia. And indeed, you omitted any mention of Bosnia in your list of policy priorities in your written answers. Meanwhile Bosnia and Herzegovina is a dysfunctional state sliding towards disintegration. It was judged unfit to get visa liberalisation on December 19th, while Serbian citizens among others did.

How are you going to change the perception that Brussels is either indifferent or paralysed by dithering and division about what to do about the impending or actual crisis in Bosnia? Will you insist that Serbia actively supports Bosnia's territorial integrity? How can the EU combine an insistence on standards and conditionality with incentives like visa liberalisation to get the necessary reforms?

Stefan Fule's answer:

It is exactly that conditionality in the framework of visa liberalisation we are applying in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and making sure that there is a list of benchmarks the authorities have to fulfil before we grant them such a statute. So it is not only about the result, but also an instrument for us to accelerate reforms in the particular country.

We already had a discussion with Lady Ashton on the ways to help Bosnia and Herzegovina and not to lose momentum, and we are worried about the current situation. We hope very much that the politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina will find soon the last remaining condition for closing the office of the High Representative which would then allow us to be even more active. I think that we need to use the perspective of Bosnian membership in the EU to the maximum extent.