VIŠKOVIĆ: MEASURES THAT WOULD ABOLISH SRPSKA’S JURISDICTIONS UNACCEPTABLE

BANJA LUKA, MAY 15 /SRNA/ - Republika Srpska Prime Minister Radovan Višković said in Banja Luka that he cannot accept measures that would abolish Srpska’s jurisdictions in the negotiations on BiH's path to the EU.

"As long as I am the Prime Minister of Srpska, I cannot accept these three measures - the abolition of the entity veto, the introduction of a call center at the BiH level, and the appointment to the Constitutional Court of BiH, instead of our proposal to replace foreign judges with domestic ones. By this, Srpska is not obstructing BiH's European path; unfortunately, such demands are an abuse of the Republic," Višković told reporters. He assessed that everything done in recent years on the European path has a certain degree of insincerity. "Through economic measures, attempts are being made to push through something that has nothing to do with the European path, but is mostly political," said Višković. He emphasized that there were 113 measures from the European Commission related to the Growth Plan for BiH. "Mostly thanks to Republika Srpska, only three measures remain unresolved. In all meetings, we were encouraged to reach some consensus so that the agreement would be over 95%, which we achieved," said Višković. He specified that there was no agreement on having a single center for all services at the BiH level, as this is not in accordance with the Constitution. "This means that someone who needs help of firefighters or police would have to call Sarajevo. Isn't our proposal for two call centers, one in Srpska and the other in the Federation of BiH /FBiH/, more logical?" asked Višković. According to him, the second unresolved measure concerns the composition of the Constitutional Court of BiH and the requirement for the court's decisions to be binding throughout BiH. "I raised the question of what we will do with the decisions that are not respected throughout BiH. Do you know that there are more unimplemented decisions of the Constitutional Court in the FBiH than in Srpska? Our proposal was to enact a law on the Constitutional Court and elect domestic judges who would decide by consensus," said Višković. The Prime Minister of Srpska said that the third unresolved measure is the abolition of the entity veto. "They initially suggested that this apply to some services dealing with state aid. In this case, surely, no one in Srpska is naive enough to sign such a measure, as it would essentially mean the abolition of Srpska. At the cost of European millions or billions, which I don't think they have, I cannot accept decisions that aim to abolish Srpska's jurisdictions in a perfidious and political manner," Višković said. He reminded that during the negotiations with the EU, there were assurances that if 95% of the measures were agreed upon, a corresponding amount of money would be received from the planned one billion Euros. "That's why I said, we've agreed on the majority, so give us that proportion of the money. Then we were informed that they couldn't proceed without these three unresolved measures, saying it as a red line and a condition for the Growth Plan and EU aid to BiH. That's why I said if this is the condition, there's no need for further talks," Višković concluded.