WESTERN BALKANS : EU SHOULD ENCOURAGE SOLUTION IN BOSNIA, SAYS CROATIAN MEP.

• Position: Member of the European Parliament - Brief article

Among the handful of Western Balkan countries working toward EU membership, the one with the biggest hill to climb, nearly everyone agrees, is Bosnia. Addressing this issue on a trip to Washington, Croatian MEP Tonino Picula (S&D) said "the EU must encourage but not impose a solution" in reforming Bosnia's state structures. Bosnia's current constitutional setup, enshrined in the 1995 Dayton agreement that ended the Bosnian war, "is much more a process than a state," he said, on 4 December, speaking at a European Institute breakfast discussion. If Germany had such a system it would have 4,500 ministers, he noted. Asked if Bosnia's 500,000 Croatians should have their own entity, Picula said it was "too early" to touch the existing two-entity system consisting of a Serbian republic and Bosniak-Croat federation. In the long term, Picula advocated Bosnia moving toward a "true federation" and cited Belgium as a role model.

Picula was in Washington...