Oslobođenje: The first meeting of the interim board for monitoring of the implementation of the Interim Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) between the European Union (EU) and Bosnia and Herzegovina will be held on Tuesday, October 7th. In the meantime at the session of the Council of Ministers of BiH, the interim board should be nominated, Oslobođenje has found out from Osman Topčagić, director of the Directorate for European Integrations of BiH.
“At the meeting of the interim board we will see how the European Commission grades the present stage of implementation of the SAA and if it demands something new or different. We will present what we have done by now and how we see our further activities. This will be the first encounter and more official indication of implementation of the SAA. Also, on Friday the deadline for implementation of the annual report on progress will expire. In the annual report, our activities from 15th June this year by today will also be found. There are 30 priorities, but also all other activities stated in the European Partnership. We have also prepared the action plan for the European Partnership and we expect that the Council of Ministers of BiH will adopt it by the end of this year”, Topčagić has said.
Responsibility on the Prime Minister
Some countries have the ministries of the European integrations, and in BiH – The Directorate for the European Integrations. According to the first man of the Directorate, Osman Topčagić, it is not important how the institution which deals with the European integrations will be called and how it functions. “In Serbia it is called the office, in Macedonia and Montenegro the secretariat, and in Albania the ministry. In Hungary, before the entrance in the EU the Ministry of external affairs was dealing with this subject, and in Slovenia – the office, but it has a minister. The essence is what really matters. With us, the good thing is, although we sometimes forget about it, that the Prime Minister or the chairperson of the Council of Ministries of BiH is responsible for the whole process of the European integrations. In respect to that, this situation is better than if the minister was dealing with this subject. In Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro vice presidents of the governments are dealing with this subject”, Topčagić has said.
On the question if BiH will be the only country that entered the EU with entities, Topčagić could not give a concrete answer, but he pointed out: “So far, our colleagues from the EU did not tell us if we may or may not have the entities. It is always said that the internal organization of the country is country’s own thing, so there are monarchies, republics, centralized or decentralized states. The EU wants an efficient mechanism of deciding and sustainable system of the government, economically rationalized. They want a system which makes decisions in a reasonable time frame and fulfills the conditions during the process and after the process of entering the EU. This is a key priority in the European Partnership from November last year”.
Divided responsibility
The Stability and Association Agreement which has been signed by our country with the EU falls into the third generation of the European agreements offered particularly to the countries of West Balkans. This document is of a mixed character, which means that for the areas of cooperation partly responsible are the member countries, and partly the EU. By its implementation our country would need to solve the relations with the EU on all three pillars of the EU – economic politics and common market, common foreign and security policy, and judiciary and internal affairs.