Constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the reform being negotiated over that country's complicated and expensive government structure established by the Dayton Peace Accords. The signing of the accord ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but critics argue that its organization of the country was not meant to be permanent.

Dayton established a rotating presidency of three presidents elected by the country's Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. While this has led to a sort of power-sharing among ethnic groups it has made government less stable, with a new president every eight months.

Dayton also established the position of High Representative. This UN position was given wide-ranging powers including the ability to sack members high ranking members of government.

The treaty also solidified the existence of two separate war-time entities in the country: the then Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska (later the internationally administered Brčko District was created).

New talks began during the tenth anniversary celebration of the accord on November 21, 2005 in Washington D.C.. The United States, perhaps overambitiously, expected a preliminary deal to be reached at this conference, but talks soon fell apart. Members of the presidency did agree to increase the powers of the prime minister and add two ministries to the central government, but this fell far short of expectations. A second round of talks held on January 17 also failed to produce any results.

A sticking point has been the creation of a unified presidency. This would favour the largest single ethnic group (the Bosniaks), but some guarantees have been made for the other groups to hold vice-presidency.

Also, the country's great decentralization dating from the war has created a large bureaucracy. Any reform would have to strengthen the powers of the federal government. This would strip powers from both the Federation and the Republika Srpska. However, this has met opposition from the government of the Republika Srpska, which notes that of the country's thirteen governments, eleven are in the Federation (ten cantonal governments and the Federation government). The other two are the Republika Srpska and state-level governments.

These reforms are key to Bosnia and Herzegovina fulfilling their obligations to the European Union's Stabilisation and Association Agreement.

The six ruling coalition parties announced on 2007-12-14 that talks would resume in January in Brussels, and that the two main Croat parties (Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatian Democratic Union 1990) had submitted proposals for a new federal structure to the other party leaders.^[1]

The main parties agreed to reinvigorate constitutional reform efforts after the successful signing of the SAA.^[2]