HOW EUROPE ABANDONED FUNDAMENTAL LEGAL PRINCIPLES IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

HOW EUROPE ABANDONED FUNDAMENTAL LEGAL PRINCIPLES

IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

 

In our country, Bosnia-Herzegovina, all fundamental legal principles have been gravely violated and turned upside-down, having generated the dramatic disturbances of its constitutional order and mass violence, whose consequences we have all witnessed in the last 30 years.  

There is a long list of reversals and violations of fundamental legal principles in Bosnia-Herzegovina, promoted and implemented primarily by representatives of the European Union (previously, the European Community).   

This list starts with the reversal of the principle of sovereignty, comitted by the official representatives of the then European Community, Lord Carrington and Jose Cutileiro, at the Lisbon Conference organized by the European Community in February 1992. One of the basic postulates of both political theory and constitutional law, saying that sovereignty of the state is indivisible and non-transferable, was turned upside-down by Carrington and Cutileiro, who divided Bosnia-Herzegovina's sovereignty and its territory into three separate, ethnically determined parts, and then transferred these parts to the self-proclaimed leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina's three major ethnic groups (Alija Izetbegović, Radovan Karadžić, Mate Boban). 

Ethnic cleansing and genocide that followed in the period 1992-1995 were a direct consequence of the Carrington-Cutileiro's reversal of the postulate of sovereignty's indivisibility and non-transferability: in order to create three quasi-sovereign mono-ethnic territories out of the single multi-ethnic territory of the sovereign state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, it was necessary to cleanse these three territories from members of other ethnic groups. As this goal could only be achieved by means of mass-violence, the war and genocide that followed from 1992 to 1995 were, in fact, a direct implementation of the Carrington-Cutileiro Plan, a plan from which the European Community, and then the European Union, has never distanced itself. Moreover, all the peace-plans in the period 1992-1995, which the European Community proposed in partnership with the United States of America, took the pattern of Bosnia-Herzegovina's ethnic partition, based on the tripartite division and transfer of its sovereignty, as the only available solution. 

To the present day, the European Union's officials have failed to recognize the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina and its institutions, continuously insisting on the pattern of communication and negotiation exclusively with the three self-appointed ethnic leaders, who are being treated as three quasi-sovereign tribal chiefs (nowadays, these are Bakir Izetbegović, Milorad Dodik, and Dragan ÄŒović). In this way, the European Union's officals have practically transformed the constitutional structure of the sovereign state of Bosnia-Herzegovina into that of a union of tribal communities. 

The Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in November 1995, attempted to restore Bosnia-Herzegovina's sovereignty, having granted the ethnically cleansed territories created in the war the status of two autonomous territorial  'entities' in the peace agreement's Annex 4, which functions as Bosnia-Herzegovina's Constitution. However, the state's internal sovereignty has never been fully restored, given the fact that these 'entities' have been granted arbitrary veto power (the so-called 'entity voting') in the state Parliament's lower house, the House of Representatives. Also, in the Parliament's upper house, the House of Peoples, the three major ethnic groups have also been granted arbitrary veto power. Given this double veto key, the state sovereignty has remained drastically reduced, if not practically abolished.

As a compensation for that curtailment, the Dayton Peace Accords in its Annex 10 introduced the institution of the international High Representative, with legal rights to overpower blockades that can be caused by vetos in both Houses. To further strengthen the state sovereignty, the Dayton Peace Accords in its Annex 9 introduced the institution of state-owned corporations. To reverse some of the consequences of ethnic cleansing and restore the property relations disrupted by the war, the Dayton Peace Accords in its Annex 7 introduced the obligations of return of the refugees and restoration of their property seized by the occupying forces.       

However, from 1995 to the present day, neither the provisions of Annex 7 nor those of Annex 9 have been implemented. The current situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in which the state property is being claimed by the entities, while a major part of the refugees' private property is still being held by those who seized it during the war and afterwards, is to a greatest extent a consequence of the grave violations of the Dayton Peace Accords and non-implementation of its Annex 7 and Annex 9. Again, this non-implementation was primarily caused by the elements of sovereignty (veto powers), granted to the entities at the expense of the state's sovereignty. Also, it has been caused by a continuous lack of use of the High Representative's legal rights to overpower the entities' veto powers. In this case, the violation of Annex 10 has been caused by omission.  

The Peace Implementation Council, a body formally superior to the High Representative, has also entered the process of violation of the Dayton Peace Accords by proposing the option of abolishment of the institution of the High Representative under the extra-Dayton conditions labelled as '5+2'. Thus one of the basic legal principles has also been put in question: no contract can remain valid if you annihilate or exclude any of its parts. For, abolishment of the High Representative, as the central part of Annex 10, leads to abolishment of the entire Annex 10 and therefore of the entire Dayton Peace Accords; that is, the Dayton Peace Accords cannot remain valid if its Annex 10 is practically abolished through abolishment of the High Representative.   

Having failed to insist on implementation of Annex 9 and creation of state-owned corporations, now the official representatives of the European Union insist on 'apportionment' of the state property (lands, rivers, forests), although the Parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina has never reached a decision to distribute or apportion any part of the state property. Although there are laws on the state level which allow the entities to use and manage the state property, this property has never been granted or apportioned to the entities as their property by any legal act. However, druing his recent visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Oliver Varhelyi, an official representative of the European Union, insisted on 'apportionment' of the state property, as if the right to use and management of the state property given to the entities has been transformed into the latter's right to take and own the property of the state. Through this legal fraud, by insisting on the suggested reduction of the state property to the property of the entities, the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina - this time in the form of ownership over its lands, rivers and forests - is being transformed into the sovereignty of the entities. An attempt by the European Union's representative to force Bosnia-Herzegovina into 'apportionment' of its state property, unfortunately, only testifies to the continuity of destruction of the fundamental legal principles that the European Union has been implementing in Bosnia-Herzegovina ever since the Lisbon Conference and the Carrington-Cutileiro Plan. 

Bosnia-Herzegovina is no 'special case' and does not need anything else but a restoration and application of the fundamental legal principles and postulates, which are applied to the rest of Europe. Bosnia-Herzegovina needs a constitution based on civic, liberal-democratic principles, a constitution that might be a replica of any European constitution - Swiss, Spanish, or German one, or even that of the United States of America. 

In this effort, to restore a legal system that would be compatible with European, civic, liberal-democratic ones, we are asking for your support, referring to the  principle that law and order are equally applicable to all.  

 

 

Citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina