Constant bickering among the divided country’s political elites has pushed the country to the back of the pack of Western Balkan EU hopefuls.
In a recent opinion piece, Luigi Soreca, the EU’s special representative and head of the EU delegation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, noted that two years ago, the European Council gave the green light to start accession negotiations with the country. The structured process of accession talks, he said, offers the most effective way to strengthen democratic institutions, ensure the rule of law, and radically improve living standards, as had been the case in other countries on the path to EU membership.
“Two years on, instead of a new start that would help turbocharge Bosnia and Herzegovina’s significant unused potential, it looks like yet another missed opportunity,” Soreca wrote.
While EU representatives and analysts point to the political leadership as the main actor behind a series of missed opportunities to kickstart the frozen accession process, the ruling parties blame each other for slowing the process, and ultimately, it is the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina who suffer.
Crucially, BiH authorities must cooperate to pass laws and regulations the EU has made prerequisites for accession negotiations to begin. These include laws on the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) – which appoints and disciplines judges and prosecutors – and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country’s highest ordinary court. These laws regularly appear on the agendas of scheduled sessions of both houses of the
BiH Parliament, yet discussions are either blocked due to a lack of quorum or postponed.
According to Soreca, the EU’s position is clear: It wants Bosnia and Herzegovina in the union, but only if the country’s leaders want it even more.
“In the current highly unstable and uncertain geopolitical environment, there is strong momentum for a broader Europe where peace, stability, and prosperity flourish. Some candidate countries, in the region and beyond, have leveraged this new geopolitical context to make significant strides on their European path, while others, like Iceland, are seriously considering restarting accession talks. Unfortunately, the same level of political will and ambition is absent in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Soreca said.
Political Dithering
Although Soreca’s message was directed at political actors in BiH, Haris Plakalo, secretary of the pro-EU European Movement in BiH, points out that similar messages have been delivered previously during visits by EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Every high-level visit highlighted the disunity among Bosnian politicians.
“I believe there is still time for European integration, but there is no political will, and this is holding back all these processes – not just the formal adoption of laws, but also the parts that should bring tangible benefits to citizens,” Plakalo said.
Plakalo underlined that adoption of new laws on the HJPC and Court of BiH is a critical step toward harmonizing the country’s legal framework with that of the EU. Edo Kanlic of Transparency International BiH notes that parallel procedures in parliament and the Council of Ministers are underway with two versions of these laws, raising questions about their alignment with the opinions of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission legal advisory body – a prerequisite highlighted by the European Commission itself.
Kanlic, like other observers, argues that campaigning for October’s general elections is taking priority over the EU path.
“Another process showing that progress toward the EU path is unlikely before the elections is the appointment of the chief negotiator, which is also a prerequisite for starting negotiations.”
This indicates, according to Kanlic, that there is no direct and constructive communication between different levels of government and that all actors have prematurely entered the election campaign, making real progress by October unlikely.
“And we know that the post-election period for forming a government also takes time, so I fear we can already say that 2026 will be a lost year for European integration,” he added.
Shifting Responsibility
The generally pro-European “Troika” parties (Social Democratic Party, People and Justice, Our Party), part of the parliamentary majority, accused the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) and its leader Milorad Dodik, former president of Republika Srpska, at the end of 2025 of blocking the European path by delaying the adoption of judicial laws. The SNSD responded by blaming politicians from Sarajevo – the Troika – for the delays.
At a recent meeting of the European Parliament’s Stabilization and Association Committee in Strasbourg, Branislav Borenovic, former leader of the opposition Party of Democratic Progress, simply stated what has long been known: “The European integration process of Bosnia and Herzegovina is at a serious standstill.”
The main reason for this, Borenovic said, “is that the current authorities, for almost their entire mandate, have not proposed key European laws in the judiciary sector nor appointed BiH’s chief negotiator with the European Union. Because of such irresponsibility and inaction by the Council of Ministers, precious time on the European path has been lost.”
Adi Cerimagic, an analyst with the European Stability Initiative, previously told N1 TV that BiH has developed a “blame game” atmosphere.
“It seems to me that there is a competition to see who will be blamed for the lack of EU progress, and different actors in the country are trying to show who is stopping the process, with the expectation that the EU will identify the culprit, which could then be capitalized on in upcoming elections,”
Cerimagic said. He added that the EU rarely names individual culprits and sees BiH’s integration as a whole process.
Touching on the debate over whether the government or parliament should appoint the chief negotiator, Cerimagic said that the EU’s priority is for the negotiator to have a clear mandate to speak on behalf of the state.
“The EU, as far as I know, has no clear stance on which institution should carry out the appointment. The EU wants the chief negotiator, whoever that is, to have access to everyone in BiH, to represent the country, and to coordinate, harmonize, report, and explain,” he added.
History of the Process
Bosnia and Herzegovina applied to the European Commission for an opinion on EU membership 10 years ago. In 2019, the commission announced 14 key priorities the country needed to fulfill. In 2022, it received candidate status, and two years ago, Brussels gave the green light to start negotiations.
EU leaders required the country to take several key steps before the negotiations could begin: adopt a law on freedom of access to information at the central state level, amend the HJPC law to strengthen judicial integrity, adopt legislation aligning visa and migration policies with those of the EU, and pass a law on the powers of the human rights ombudsman.
Late last year, the European Commission noted in its 2025 Enlargement Package that BiH had made no significant progress due to the continuing political crisis and was among four countries stagnating on their EU path. The report covering 2024 and spring 2025 drew attention to severe political tensions, especially emerging from the Republika Srpska entity, as major obstacles in the country’s integration.
“Following the first-instance criminal conviction of the entity president Milorad Dodik, the entity assembly passed laws undermining BiH’s constitutional and legal order, state institutions’ functionality, and fundamental rights,” the report stated.
Dodik was sentenced to one year in prison for noncompliance with decisions of the high representative – nominated by the international community, this post carries the power to veto laws and decree new ones – and was barred from serving as Republika Srpska president for six years.
(Dodik was concurrently removed from office. In August 2025, the country’s high court upheld Dodik’s request to convert the prison sentence to a fine.)
A Missed Opportunity
The only achievement of the Council of Ministers, albeit delayed, came last September when the government adopted a legislative package called the Reform Agenda as a crucial step toward accessing EU funds for reforms and growth, as the last country in the Western Balkans to do so. Funds would come via the EU’s Reform and Growth Facility, the financial instrument within the EU Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, although experts warn that BiH lacks an institutional framework to implement it.
Kanlic notes that the Growth Plan is scheduled to run until 2027, meaning that BiH has effectively halved the implementation period without officially engaging with the instrument.
“This sends a negative signal to both the European Commission, which evaluates the seriousness of candidate states based on participation, and to citizens, who cannot access nearly 1 billion euros in EU funds due to a lack of political will and of implementing reforms. As things stand, it is unlikely that BiH will draw a significant portion, if any, of this funding by 2027,” Kanlic said.
Soreca in his op-ed wrote that the citizens of BiH deserve the same standards and opportunities as their peers in the EU. The Reform Agenda is a significant opportunity for deepening economic integration with the EU, improving the business environment, and attracting investment, he said. “But adoption on paper does not mean implementation in practice.”
He noted that key steps remain incomplete, including the ratification of the agreements which form the legal basis for any payments, and the appointment of a Reform Agenda coordinator, thus blocking access to 68 million euros in Growth Plan “prefinancing” which the country is entitled to.
“We must also clearly state that missed opportunities have a cost,” he added.
Kanlic recalls that Bosnian election campaigns have never been focused on fulfilling European requirements. The lack of seriousness and strategic vision is evident, he said, in that the adoption of these crucial laws is usually discussed only in the final weeks before quarterly sessions of the European Council, the EU’s top decision-making body.
“And the question is when we will get a new European Commission that may not prioritize enlargement, with the risk of leaving BiH in a prolonged phase between the decision to open negotiations and actual negotiations,” Kanlic concluded.
Haris Rovcanin is an assistant editor and journalist in the Bosnian bureau of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).
