The High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, German Christian Schmidt, has struck down a controversial Bosnian Serb law that was supposed to suspend all decisions of the country’s highest court. International news agencies report this on Saturday. The Bosnian Serb parliament had approved the law because the Serbian judge had withdrawn from that court, probably temporarily. The Bosnian Serbs did not want the court to continue its work in his absence as announced.
Schmidt has a unique mandate in Bosnia, fragile and democratically organized since the war in the 1990s; as an international regulator, he has the power to reverse laws and fire government officials. At the end of last year, Schmidt also intervened around the elections. Then that led to anger among part of the population.
In Bosnia, tensions between the different population groups lie close to the surface. Critics of the nationalist Bosnian Serbs, led by their president Milorad Dodik, feared the law would be a step towards the country’s disintegration. Dodik, who has been sanctioned by the US and UK for his separatism, recently said that as far as he is concerned the Serbian republic already an independent state. “We are ready,” he said.
‘Directly contrary to Dayton agreement’
Schmidt said in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo on Saturday that he would scrap the law introduced by Dodik because it “directly violates the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Dayton peace agreement”. That agreement reached in the US in 1995 put an end to the Balkan war that claimed at least a hundred thousand lives. The US embassy in Bosnia called the recent actions of the Bosnian Serb parliament “a deliberate attack” on Dayton that will have “consequences”.
In turn, Bosnian Serbs say they do not recognize Schmidt’s legitimacy because Russia never approved Schmidt’s appointment. In addition to his intervention in Bosnian Serb law, the High Representative on Saturday also announced an amendment that would allow the prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina residents who endanger state institutions.
2023-07-01 17:59:28
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