[Croatian President Zoran] Milanovic should not have insisted on something that cannot pass, which is the so-called legitimate representation, BiH Presidency member Zeljko Komsic said Monday, after the Brdo-Brijuni summit.
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Monday that “some people in Bosnia and Herzegovina are bothered by the mere mention of the concept of constituent peoples, which is why the joint declaration was not adopted at the meeting of the Brdo-Brijuni Process.”
“My proposal from several days ago, in preparation for this meeting, was to mention the constituency of the people in BiH in the document. To me, to us, to many of us, that seems like a minimum standard, but some colleagues from BiH did not allow that, and that proposal was ‘rejected immediately”,’ he said.
In his reaction to this move by Milanovic, Komsic stated that BiH Presidency Chairman Sefik Dzaferovic and he took a clear position on the issue.
“The verdict of the European Court of Human Rights in the Zornic case, more precisely in paragraph 43 of the verdict, ordered the rejection of the concept of constitutivity, to which, as written in the verdict, and not only according to us, had to be agreed to in order to stop the acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. That judgment is an integral part of the Opinion of the European Commission on candidate status for BiH membership in the EU. I am grateful to President Pahor, who advocates for BiH to receive candidate status. From this comes his understanding that we cannot adopt those principles that conflict with the judgments of the Court in Strasbourg and the Opinion of the European Commission,” Komsic noted.
After Dzaferovic and Komsic intervened, instead of a joint declaration the leaders of the Western Balkan Countries adopted conclusions.