Croatian MEP Željana Zovko, who has served as Bosnia’s ambassador to Italy, France and Spain, believes the European Council will take a favourable decision on Bosnia’s desire to join the EU, she told Euractiv ahead of next week’s European Council meeting.
The likely opening of EU accession talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of Croatia’s “greatest foreign policy achievements” in this mandate, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Tuesday.
He noted that this decision “is important for the whole of Bosnia and for all three constituent nations, and especially for the Croats who have always most strongly advocated the European path of Bosnia.”
While the EU Commission’s recommendation to open negotiations with Bosnia, announced by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the EU Parliament on Tuesday, is a big step forward for Sarajevo, the recommendation itself does not mean Bosnia will automatically begin accession talks. The European Council, which meets in Brussels on 21 and 22 March, will have to make a unanimous decision. Zovko told Euractiv, saying that Plenković and von der Leyen played a key role in the whole story of Bosnia’s European path:
I believe that the European Council will open accession negotiations with Bosnia at its meeting next week.
Zovko said she was pleased and welcomed the European Commission’s decision to recommend the start of negotiations with Bosnia. In her view, the European Commission showed that it “recognised a key moment for peace and stability in Bosnia, as well as for its future”.
The path to EU membership is long and arduous and requires unanimous agreement of all the bloc’s leaders. Croatia was the last country to apply for membership, and it took 10 years before it was formally admitted in 2013.
