High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council

Luxembourg – Slovenia’s proposal that the EU should grant Bosnia-Herzegovina EU candidate status as soon as possible received a great deal of support and, above all, a great deal of understanding at today’s meeting of EU foreign ministers, Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon said after she outlined the proposal to her counterparts.

Brussels – Slovenia has produced a proposal to grant Bosnia-Herzegovina EU candidate status as early as at the EU summit next week. Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon will present it to her EU counterparts on Monday at a session of the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg.

Lawmakers in the Republika Srpska National Assembly voted on Thursday to adopt a draft law to set up the entity's own High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council - intensifying the political crisis in the country as Bosnian Serb political leaders continue to challenge state-level authority.

On the other hand, the Greens in the European Parliament state that the European Union can react militarily if necessary, i.e. to send 6.000 soldiers to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Dodik blaming foreign powers for the tensions in Bosnia, accused them of wanting to create "a Muslim state" and warned that any move by the European Union to exclude the Republika Srpska from its initiatives in the country would only "cement the independence" of the entity.

The Dutch advisor to Bosnia's High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, HJPC, says the proceedings conducted against the state court president and chief prosecutor highlight the system's reluctance to impose serious penalties.

The Disciplinary Commission of Bosnia's High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, HJPC, the country's most senior judicial body, has axed Gordana Tadić as Chief Prosecutor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it announced on Monday, citing professional negligence among other issues.

The strategy also says that the state prosecution "should file a proposal to transfer a case at the earliest possible stage of the criminal proceedings".

"We recommended to the Bosnian state prosecution to reconstitute regional teams that they had in order to maintain expertise in a particular area of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I think a part of [the problem] is the management, a part of it is the quality of indictments, so I think that there is an issue there," Berton explained.

A series of similar scandals in the Balkans in recent weeks and months has had far less effect on governments and political careers.