Bosnia-Herzegovina – Statehood at a Crossroads
Bosna i Hercegovina: državnost na raskrižju puteva

Summary/Abstract: The author maintains that the constitutional problems we face today in Bosnia-Herzegovina are not due as much to the very Dayton Constitution as they are to the fact that the Dayton Constitution has not invalidated the existing constitutions of the BiH entities, the Bosniac-Croat Federation and Republica Srpska dominated by Serbs. Furthermore, he claims that, by consciously choosing an extensive approach to the interpretation of the Dayton Constitution, the international community has already brought about a significant de facto amendment to the Constitution. Regardless of the fact that not a single word of the Constitution had been modified, such a process has set a trend of the transfer of the entity competences to the state level in nearly all areas. However, in the author’s opinion, despite the continuity, and a degree of success, of such an approach through de facto amendments, this process is now spent. All further changes will have to abide by the procedure of constitutional amending as stipulated by the constitution. Finally, the author draws our attention to the two essential matters: 1. Today when the BiH makes some effort to join the European institutions, it is illogical to see the US representatives, not Europeans, playing the key role in negotiations aiming to amend the Dayton Constitution; and we should both regret and criticise the fact that the representatives of the Council of Europe seem to refrain from getting more involved with the negotiations; 2. The belief that the crisis of Bosnian statehood can be overcome by a change of the constitution only is an illusion. In quite a dramatic way, the Bosnian society is lacking a sense of belonging to its own country. THE ARTICLE PUBLISHED ON FEBRUARY 2006 AS A PART OF “EU ACCESSION MONITOR” - TRANSITIONS ONLINE (WWW.TOL.ORG).

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