EU Commissioner Pierre Mirel praised representatives of entity and BiH government institutions for participating in the latest plenary session of the EU-BiH Structured Dialogue on Justice, which was held today and yesterday in Banja Luka. According to the official EU statement, the session “focused on issues related to war crimes processing, as well as on key institutional reforms that have been developed in the course of the past months, but that are still pending finalization and final political consensus.”
On issues related to the implementation of the ECtHR ruling in the Maktouf and Damjanovic case, the European Commission urged competent BiH authorities to comply without delays with the request put forward by the Department for Execution of ECtHR Judgments at the Council of Europe and inform about individual and general measures to address the impact of the Maktouf/Damjanovic jurisprudence. It recalled that harmonised courts practice in the application of substantive criminal law to war crimes processing remains an important objective. Equality of citizens before the law and harmonised jurisprudence are a key aspects in the ongoing effort to the advance clearing the war crimes cases backlog throughout the BiH judiciary. Justice for war crimes is a crucial endeavor, for the victims, their families, as well as for the broader efforts towards reconciling societies. All war criminals must be brought to justice and duly processed.
