According to a report by news website EU Inside, Croatia played a major part in pushing the EU to renew its engagement with BiH this year. The article, which includes an interview with Croatian first Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Vesna Pusic, claims that Croatia first proposed a new approach to Bosnia’s EU accession early this year, and laid the foundation for the new plan put forward this month by the UK and Germany.
A year and a half after its EU accession, Croatia can boast a huge diplomatic success – the return of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the agenda of the Union. In the beginning of the year, after the massive protests against the enormous unemployment (mostly among the young people) and the severe economic situation in the country, Croatia proposed the EU to change the approach toward Bosnia and Herzegovina by giving the country a special status….
And here it is – soon after the elections in October, Britain and Germany came up with an initiative of their own calling for a brand new strategy for Bosnia and Herzegovina. This happened during a conference in Berlin on South-Eastern Europe attended by the foreign minsters of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. Croatia, too, was invited to attend.
In the interview, Minister Pusic also states that it has been hard to keep BiH on the EU’s agenda, in the face of seemingly more urgent crises elsewhere in the world.
