SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina—Ignoring social protests, leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s ruling parties have rejected the latest and final attempt of the European Commission’s enlargement commissioner, Stefan Fule, to find a compromise for the country’s disputed constitutional reform. At the end of a two-day visit, Fule told a press conference Tuesday that leaders of seven main local parties were unable or unwilling to address a 2009 ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that found that certain provisions of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s constitution violated minority rights.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina will remain, at least for the time being, in breach of its international commitments. It is a shame for the politicians, through inaction, to fail, because the rest of the region is moving forward toward the European Union, and because citizens are calling politicians to be accountable,” Fule said.
The ECHR found for the plaintiffs in the 2009 ruling, known as the Sejdic-Finci case, in which Dervo Sejdic, a Roma, and Jakob Finci, a Jew, argued that parts of the Bosnia-Herzegovina constitution allocating certain government posts based on ethnicity were discriminatory. The EU has demanded that local leaders adopt new mechanisms for electing Bosnia-Herzegovina’s president and parliament as the key condition for continuation of the country’s EU accession process.