European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on March 12 said that the European Union's executive body will recommend that member states open accession negotiations with Bosnia-Herzegovina.
“Of course, more progress is necessary to join our union," von der Leyen said in a speech to the European Parliament. "But the country is showing that it can deliver on the membership criteria, and on its citizens’ aspiration to be part of our family. This is why today we will decide to recommend to the [European] Council to open accession negotiations with Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
The recommendation, together with a progress report commissioned in December, will be the basis for discussions by EU leaders toward a decision on whether to open accession talks with Bosnia during a summit scheduled for March 21-22 in Brussels.
Bosnia was granted EU candidate status in December 2022, and one year later EU leaders voiced readiness to open accession talks with Sarajevo once the Western Balkan state met all conditions. They also asked the European Commission to put together a progress report so they could discuss the issue at the March summit.
The report is to be published later on March 12 after a meeting of the commission.
Bosnia, which went through a devastating war from 1992-95 that killed more than 100,000 people, is again wrestling with rising ethnic tensions.
Under the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war, Bosnia consists of two entities -- a Muslim-Croat federation and the ethnic Serb Republika Srpska -- held together by a weak central government.
Republika Srpska leader Milorad Dodik has repeatedly threatened secession, spurning the Muslim-Croat federation and taking steps to establish some parallel institutions over the past two years.
Dodik, who is on friendly terms with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is under U.S. and British sanctions for his obstruction of the Dayton agreement and for violating the legitimacy of Bosnia.
He has been charged over two laws he signed in July that allow the Bosnian Serb entity to bypass or ignore decisions made by the high representative of the international community in Bosnia, Christian Schmidt.
Bosnia is one of the nine current EU candidate states. The other eight are Albania, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine.