00:00 The European Commission will recommend at 27 the opening of a negotiation of adhesion
00:04 with Bosnia, the last decision on the date of a movement to expand the EU that has gained
00:08 in force since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
00:10 Let's salute the impressive progress made by this small Balkan country, the President
00:16 of the Ursula von der Leyen Commission announced on Tuesday that Brussels would recommend at
00:20 27 the opening of these formal discussions, as the Commission had already done at the end
00:24 of 2023 for Ukraine and Moldova.
00:26 Member States will discuss this recommendation at their next summit on March 21 and 22 in
00:32 Brussels.
00:33 "We have opened the main door of the EU and there is no back door," said Nermin Nixik,
00:38 the Prime Minister of the Croatian-Bosnian entity, one of the two entities constituting
00:42 the country with the one grouping the Serbs of Bosnia.
00:45 Bosnia remains very divided after the intercommunal conflict that devastated this former Yugoslavian
00:50 republic and killed more than 100,000.
00:52 Nearly 30 years after the Dayton Accords that led to this conflict in 1995, the country
00:58 still knows a paralysis of its institutions.
01:00 It is separated in two, a Serbian entity, regularly accused of playing the game of Moscow in the
01:05 region, and another Bosnian Croatian, whose leaders, on the other hand, want the country
01:10 to join NATO.
01:11 Brussian rhetoric.
01:12 Of course, additional progress is necessary to join our Union.
01:18 But the country demonstrates that it can meet the criteria for adhesion and respond to the
01:22 aspirations of its citizens to be part of our family, assured Mrs. von der Leyen in front
01:26 of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
01:29 German diplomacy chief Annalna Barbock had warned last Tuesday in Sarajevo against
01:34 Russian rhetoric in Bosnia, an allusion barely veiled to Bosnian Serbian chief Milorad Dodik,
01:39 who was recently decorated by Vladimir Putin.
01:42 Mr. Dodik congratulated himself on Tuesday on the announcement of the Commission.
01:46 "For us, the Serbs of Bosnia, the European way is important because it represents the
01:51 realization of a great national goal for the Serbs, that of living in an economic and
01:55 political space without borders, namely with neighboring Serbia," he wrote.
02:00 Last week, the high representative of the international community in Bosnia, Christoph
02:06 Schmid, had denounced the anti-European behavior of the Bosnian Serbian chief, however calling
02:11 not to make an obstacle to integration.
02:13 Mrs. von der Leyen assured Tuesday that Bosnia was now fully aligned on foreign
02:19 policy and security of the EU, which is crucial in these troubled times on the geopolitical
02:23 level.
02:24 Bosnia has been a candidate to join the EU since 2016, but negotiations accelerated
02:29 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which rekindled the interest of the EU
02:34 for the Balkan region where Russia is also influential.
02:36 "Over the past few years, we have moved at a higher speed in our approach to this
02:41 region," the president of the Commission recognized.
02:44 Several ministers or heads of European governments have recently multiplied their trips to Sarajevo
02:50 to support this process of adhesion.
02:51 But several obstacles remain.
02:54 The country has just adopted a law against the "whitewash" demanded by Brussels, but
02:59 it still does not agree on the reform of courts or laws on conflicts of interest in
03:03 institutions.
03:04 There has been more progress in just over a year than in more than a decade, however,
03:09 assured Mrs. von der Leyen on Tuesday.
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