Question to Commissioner-designate Stefan Fule (enlargement and neighbourhood policy) about Bosnia (Newham Borough Liberal Democrats)

Newham Borough Liberal Democrats <info@libdems.org.uk>

Question to Commissioner-designate Stefan Fule (enlargement and neighbourhood policy) about Bosnia

January 13, 2010 12:00 PM
By Sarah Ludford MEP in Commissioner-Designate Stefan Fule
Originally published by Sarah Ludford MEP

I am now going to give you the chance to specifically talk about Bosnia. Last year a US academic charged that the EU lacked a viable policy towards Bosnia. And indeed, you omitted any mention of Bosnia in your list of policy priorities in your written answers. Meanwhile Bosnia and Herzegovina is a dysfunctional state sliding towards disintegration. It was judged unfit to get visa liberalisation on December 19th, while Serbian citizens among others did.

How are you going to change the perception that Brussels is either indifferent or paralysed by dithering and division about what to do about the impending or actual crisis in Bosnia? Will you insist that Serbia actively supports Bosnia's territorial integrity? How can the EU combine an insistence on standards and conditionality with incentives like visa liberalisation to get the necessary reforms?