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EU envoy threatens Bosnia with sanctions over discriminatory constitution

22 January 2010, 17:32 CET
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(BANJA LUKA) - The top European Union envoy in Bosnia on Friday said the country could face sanctions if it fails to change its discriminatory constitution before the October general elections.

Last month the European Court of Human Rights slammed Bosnia for barring Jews and Roma from running for high elected office and ordered that the constitution be changed.

"I cannot say what would be our reaction if the ruling is not executed but suspension is definitely one of the options" provided for in the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU, "but not the only one", the chief of the European Commission delegation in Bosnia, Dimitris Kourkoulas, told the Dnevni Avaz daily.

He warned that this was an urgent issue and stressed that changes to the Bosnian constitution to enable anyone regardless of religion to run for office "must be completed so that the effects of those changes can be applied already in October's elections".

Bosnia will hold general elections in October for the tripartite presidency and the central parliament as well as the parliaments and presidents of its two semi-independent entities.

Under the current constitution, posts in the federal parliament and its tripartite presidency are reserved for the three so-called constituent peoples -- Serbs, Muslims and Croats. The rules were intended to prevent ethnic strife in the wake of the country's 1992-95 war.

However, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in December that Sarajevo violated the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibiting discrimination and upholding the right to free elections.

The Bosnian constitution was an annex to the Dayton Peace accord that ended the 1992-95 conflict, splitting Bosnia into the Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation, linked by a rotating tripartite presidency.

Europe's top human rights court acknowledged that the constitution had pursued "the legitimate aim of restoring peace" and that the time was "perhaps still not ripe" for Bosnia to move from power-sharing to majority rule.

However it also noted that Sarajevo had committed to bring its electoral rules into line with the European Human Rights Convention as part of the association agreement signed with the European Union in 2008 .


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