Bosnia ready to apply for EU membership

By Dan Alexe
Contributing Editor, New Europe

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Bosnia is preparing to officially apply in January to join the European Union, in spite of the fact that it lags behind most of its neighbours.
If its application is accepted, years of tough negotiations lie ahead and many observers believe Bosnia, politically decentralized along ethnic lines and economically impoverished, is unlikely to join before 2025. Bosnia has struggled hard to overcome ethnic divisions that linger 20 years after the end of a war in which some 100,000 people died.
Although the Dayton Peace accord, signed 20 years ago this month, succeeded in ending the 1992-95 Bosnia war, it divided the former Yugoslav republic into two autonomous regions along ethnic lines – the Serb Republic and Bosniak-Croat Federation.
This complex political system, based on ethnic and regional quotas, has hampered the formation of a stable national government and left Bosnia bottom of the pack of Western Balkan states seeking EU membership.
In June this years, Bosnian Serb leaders refused to sign a reform agenda demanded by the European Union as part of a drive to speed up Bosnia’s joining the bloc.
A big chunk of the reforms demanded by the EU relate to economic and financial issues.
Of the other Western Balkan countries, Slovenia and Croatia are already EU members. Serbia and Albania have been given candidate status but they have yet to start accession talks.