The president returns to the country where he worked for two years, from 1997 to 1999, in the Cabinet of Carlos Westendorp, then High Representative | The head of the Executive rehearses his role as rotating president of the EU and asks the Bosnians to accelerate the reforms and “reduce tensions”. He visits the Sarajevo Library and pays tribute to the 23 soldiers who died in the country in the Plaza de España in Mostar
-I am excited to be back in Bosnia. I was there when I was 28…
Pedro Sánchez’s memory faltered somewhat on the flight that was taking him from Madrid to Belgrade, on the first stop of his mini-tour to the Western Balkans. Because he was barely 25 years old when he arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was 1997, and he stayed until 1999, in the midst of the Kosovo war. That young Sánchez was a member of the cabinet of the UN High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Spanish minister Carlos Westendorp. The same Sánchez who, already as President of the Government, stepped on this Saturday sarajevo Y Mostar. 25 years later.
The sides of the Avenida de los Francotiradores, the one that led the socialist leader to the headquarters of the country’s presidency, still showed, with their buildings pierced by bullets and bombs, the wounds of a savage and devastating war (1991-1995) that left 100,000 dead and a Bosnia in ruins. The conflict ended with the Dayton agreements of 1995, which served to slowly cement a still weak national structure. The pact, sponsored by the United States, was based on a model of delicate balance between three ethnic communities (Bosniaks or Bosnian-Muslims, Serbs and Croats) and two political entities endowed with vast powers (the Republika Srpskadominated by Bosnian Serbs, and the federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a Bosniak majority).
But the tension in recent years has been increasing, largely due to the will of the Republika Srpska and the Serbian leader, Milorad Dodik, to strip the State of powers, also in open defiance of the authority of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, who is in charge of supervising the implementation of the agreements from Dayton, a position held since August 2021 by the German Christian Schmidt. Political frictions, however, do not threaten the stability of the country, guaranteed by the presence of the European peacekeeping mission (EUFOR), which went from 600 to 1,100 troops last February, a reinforcement that was due not only to the deterioration of global security caused by the invasion of Ukraine, but also by the Russian influence in the region, especially in the Republika Srpska. Spain only has three soldiers deployed today, but since 1992 they have participated in UN, NATO and EU missions 46,000 soldiers23 of whom died.
The political confrontation was cited by Sánchez during his meeting with the three rotating presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Bosnian Sefik Dzaferovic, the Serbian Milorad Dodik and the Croatian Zeljko Komsic -the Head of State is a collegiate institution through which the three presidents direct the country for four years in rotating shifts of eight months – and also during his later appearance, without questions, with Dzaferovic. He asked the three leaders “reduce tension”, “diluting the current rhetoric that does not contribute to progress and returning to institutionality”, betting “always on dialogue” -“and the international community will be there”-, and put the citizenry “first, since it is the beneficiary of the pending reforms”.
“Go an extra mile”
And it is that Bosnia looks at the blockade in the face of the legislative and presidential elections next October 2nd. Elections, said the socialist leader, that must be held “normally”. The difficulties of matching balances and quotas have led to the fact that since 2018, since the last polls, it has been impossible to agree on a Government in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Sánchez, as he did this Friday in Serbia and will do in the last days of his tour (in Montenegro, North Macedonia and Albania), called for “accelerating the reforms & rdquor; required by Brussels for entry into the European Union, including the electoral system and the one that affects the Judiciary. Although progress has been made, the Bosnians must “go an extra mile”.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is the Balkan country that accumulates the most delay in its accession to the community bloc. It is the only one of the five, in fact, that does not enjoy the status of a candidate country. It applied to join the EU in 2016 and Brussels marked 14 priorities to, once completed, start the accession negotiations. Sánchez defends that the seven most important reforms be undertaken so that they are granted the status of a candidate State.
The head of the Executive, before Dzaferovic, again expressed his support “total and resounding to the region” and in the case of Bosnia, its willingness to “transform the already historic legacy into initiatives for the democratic and economic progress of the country”. His “firm commitment to the European perspective” from the country. Spain, he continued, lends its “absolute support” to be a candidate for entry into the community bloc, and is a “friendly country” that defends the “territorial integrity & rdquor; from Bosnia. A pertinent emphasis in the face of threats of secession and which he also repeated in Belgrade on Friday, in this case to underline that Spain still does not recognize the unilateral independence of Kosovo.
Dzaferovic defined Spain as “great friend” from Bosnia and thanked Sánchez for supporting the “European path & rdquor; of his country at the last European Council, in June, and to claim sovereignty and territorial integrity and to encourage reforms. Bosnia hopes that with the Spanish presidency of the EU, which starts in the second half of 2023, it will serve to accelerate the pace. And that it also serves to intensify economic and commercial relations between the two countries, because the policies are “perfect, great”. In fact, the meeting analyzed the interest of Spanish companies to invest in Bosnia and Herzegovina in areas in which they are “world leaders”, such as engineering, construction or renewable energies. The trade balance is favorable to Spain and reached 116 million euros in 2021.
Sánchez then visited the old Sarajevo Library, today the seat of the City Council, with the mayor. The building was bombed by the Serbs in 1992 and the flames engulfed more than two million books and documents. Spain participated financially in the reconstruction of the library, reopened in 2014.
In the afternoon, and already in Mostar, on the banks of the Neretva River, the president paid tribute to the 23 compatriots who died between 1993 and 2008 accompanied by the mayor of the city, with whom he toured the historic center and also the single-arch medieval bridge that was destroyed during the war and later raised again on its rubble, today a symbol of national reconciliation in the country. Sánchez reached the top of the Old Bridge among dozens of onlookers: this weekend the jump contest over the Neretva is held, a tradition of more than four centuries. But just as his entourage passed, there was no one who jumped 24 meters down, towards the river. Bad luck: the next one did it after a few minutes.