Bosnia's Farmers Risk Losing Major EU Funds

Bosnia's mainly Serbian entity, Republika Srpska, will withdraw its consent to a strategy for rural development of Bosnia for 2018 to 2021, if Bosnia's government, the Council of Ministers, does not meet some of its demands, the RS government said on March 30.

It said the Bosnian government "should ensure that IPA 2 programming, the sector Agriculture and Rural Development, is implemented in accordance with the harmonized Decision on the System of Coordination of the European Integration Process in Bosnia, or all activities on the rural development strategy will be suspended".

The RS claims some of the of the sectoral programming groups have been established without its consent and are not in line with so-called coordination mechanism established in August 2016 to improve connections between all of Bosnia's administrative levels and the EU.

The Council of Ministers adopted a strategy of rural development for 2018 to 2021 on January 4, which was the last deadline, but it has not been adopted by the state-level parliament so far.

The strategy is a crucial document for Bosnian farmers, as it provides a detailed outline of future plans for developments in agriculture, and - once approved by parliament - would finally enable Bosnian farmers to apply for EU pre-accession money, so-called IPA funds, to advance their businesses.

If Bosnia does not adopt this strategy, the next new chance to access to EU funds does not come until 2021.

The two entity budgets, in Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, currently have only some 60 million euros set aside for rural development. This is far from enough.

"We can only hope this will be resolved soon, since farmers need that money and we do have enough people with...