EU Conditionality for Stalled Constitutional Reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

　Bosnia and Herzegovina submitted its application to the European Union in February 2016; however, the progress of her accession process so far was just the outcome of propping-up. Every time Bosnia failed to meet the obligations, the EU eventually lowered its Conditionality to save the country.

　The so-called Dayton Peace Agreement “frozen” the ethnic conflicts in Bosnia between 1992-1995, by guaranteeing equality and the power-sharing system among the three ethnic groups, namely the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. In the course of post-war reconstruction, however, such mechanism has hampered any attempt to reform toward a functional state.

　The EU made remarks on the Dayton mechanism, questioning sustainability and structural flaws in it. And the EU listed as the high priority, above all, the police reform aiming to consolidate police organisations scattered across the state at various levels and to unify the chain of command into one state authority. The electoral reform of the Presidency and the House of Peoples was listed as well. Although it is not on the list, amendment to the Constitution, adopted as the Annex IV of the Dayton Agreement, is indispensable to complete those required reforms. The EU Conditionality was anticipated to become an ice-breaker of the deadlock in the Dayton mechanism, whereas such an idea turned out to be too optimistic.

　In this paper, we will examine the difficulties in transforming the Dayton mechanism with EU Conditionality, while focusing on the failure of the police reform and the electoral reform that has yet to be resolved. The first chapter gives a brief outline of the national structure in Bosnia and the problematic Dayton Constitution, and appraises the progress of the constitutional reforms including the electoral one. The second chapter overviews several matters in addition to the police reform as examples of lowering of Conditionality. Finally, we will apply the affairs discussed in previous two chapters to the conditions for success of the political conditionality in the EU Copenhagen Criteria, which Frank Schimmelfennig （2008） elaborated, to testify the Conditionality malfunction in the Bosnia’s accession process. Consequently, we will find the stalemate of ethno-politics in Bosnia, and at the same time, the EU’s incoherent attitude toward it.