“The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is quite different today compared to 25 years ago when I was the High Representative”, said Wolfgang Petritsch.
What exactly has changed? According to him, almost everything. At that time, the only strong external factors were the European Union and the United States of America, but today the situation is significantly different.
“The geopolitical landscape has changed, China’s growth and development can be felt both globally and locally here in the Balkans.”
Also, the USA is currently facing a major internal crisis, which is best evidenced by the situation of the attempted assassination of presidential candidate Donald Trump.
“The European Union and its internal dysfunction reminds me of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is facing what we call a polycrisis, which is actually several crises that are deeply connected to each other. One of them is Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the other is Israel’s War on Terrorism in Gaza and we all know that terrorism cannot be defeated by weapons and militarism. Also, there are problems in Sudan and Congo, which are also conflicts of large regional ones that create an immigration crisis in Europe, along with the crises in Syria and Afghanistan we must not forget either the climate crisis or the fight for technological supremacy between China and the US and the fight for nuclear supremacy mainly between the US and Russia, but also other countries”, claims Petritsch.
Given that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a candidate for membership in the European Union, I sincerely hope that this situation will be used by politicians and supported by citizens. Honestly, I am not afraid of a new war, mostly because of the presence of NATO, but I am afraid of the slowing down of the EU membership process”, said Petritsch.
But the biggest challenge is how to reform our country for full EU membership.
“Our idea was to first reform the laws of the subjects and after that success to take the next step, i.e. reforms at the state level, which unfortunately was not done. My successor Paddy Ashdown was not very interested in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the current High Representative Christian Schmidt shows interest and is trying to revive the role of the OHR”, Petritsch emphasized among other things.
