Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-15-Speech-3-095"
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"en.20060215.11.3-095"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, over ten years on from Dayton, it is in particular the Bosnian politicians who have to ask themselves whether they have done everything they possibly can to ensure a good future for their country’s children, so please exercise your mandate responsibly.
That having been said, I would like to follow the President-in-Office in stressing just how considerable their achievement has been. They now have a home affairs minister and a minister of defence; they have a single system for Value Added Tax and have – on paper at any rate – embarked on the reform of the police. Contrary to what is widely believed by our own countrymen, Bosnia-Herzegovina is not a hotbed of criminality. The country’s clear-up rate for crimes is higher than would be expected in the EU, and the incidence of ordinary crime is lower there than it is in our own countries. We have not just cooked that up; it is evident from the statistics, and it is something for which I think Bosnia-Herzegovina deserves all credit.
The new High Representative, Mr Schwarz-Schilling, has intimate knowledge of Bosnia-Herzegovina and will, I am sure, be pro-active and very understanding in supporting local politicians, and will not have recourse to coercive methods, in the shape of his ‘Bonn powers’. The President-in-Office spoke of acceptance of responsibility, and that will be increasingly in evidence.
I have to say, though – and I am addressing the Commissioner when I say this – that he will need support from the Commission, particularly involving it helping with the creation of jobs, setting in motion the real agriculture policy that the region has long been waiting for, and real attention on its part to the development of rural areas, for a free trade zone is of no use to the country unless it can produce its own food. That will also entail refugees being at last permitted to return to regions such as Posavina in order to repopulate them and make the fertile soil reusable again.
The Bosnian politicians, too, must at last get started on the institutional reforms that will make ethnic division a thing of the past and build a functioning state for which accession to the EU will be a real possibility. Their cooperation with the tribunal in The Hague is an indispensable requirement; there has indeed been progress, but I cannot imagine there being real and complete reconciliation unless Karadžić appears before it.
Negotiations on the stabilisation and association agreement are progressing well, and in that we rejoice; a delegation from the European Parliament will be travelling to Banja Luka this summer to discuss progress with our opposite numbers there. We wish the Council Presidency and the Commissioner every success in supporting Bosnia and Herzegovina."@en1
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