The debate that took place in Croatian politics, more precisely within the state leadership, regarding the recommendation of the European Commission for the opening of negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which the mayor of Mostar, Mario Kordić, joined two days later, represents a rarely bizarre moment in the already full of bizarre political life of Croatia and the entire of the post-Yugoslav area.
For those who did not follow, Prime Minister Plenković triumphantly announced the news as if he personally was the most responsible for that fact, then President Milanović attacked him for bragging about a complete debacle because negotiations would open without the Croatian issue being resolved and thus impose civil state, so that Mario Kordić, at the meeting with Zvonko Milas, the key figure of the Croatian Government for the diaspora, would say that none of this would have happened without the involvement of Croatia.
In other words, the Croatian right, to which Zoran Milanović certainly belongs regardless of the social democratic past, first fails to agree on whether the opening of negotiations between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Union is a good thing or not, and then behaves as if it is exclusively competent and for EU foreign policy and internal relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
By the way, and it is worth noting that, almost identical reservations as Milanović, only with fears about the diametric final outcome of the negotiations, are also held by the Bosniak right, convinced that this favors Serbian and Croatian secessionist policies.
And so, after who knows how many years and at the moment when everyone gave up on the idea, we finally saw a more realistic prospect of joining the European Union, nominally the only common goal of the citizens, the political elites, and all the countries of the region, in order to in the end it turned out that, with the exception of Andrej Plenković, that news was met with resentment by many others on the political scene. If someone had told us this just a few years ago, we would have thought he was talking complete nonsense. However, circumstances change, policies also change as a result of these new circumstances and, if nothing else, the theory that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a swamp that nothing can stir up has really been demolished on this issue.
Let's not lie, this opening of the European perspective would never have happened if Russia had not attacked Ukraine, if Europe had not become aware of the real possibility that it could be left to its own devices, with a self-isolated USA again and if it had not, thanks to these circumstances, decided to simply geopolitically complete European Union and prepare for a new era. And the only thing that politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whatever the sign may be, should care about in this situation is to use this opportunity in the best possible way.
This may seem like a sentence full of platitudes, without any real content, but concretely, we should stop manipulating national fears that this development will permanently cement inter-ethnic and constitutional relations in the country.
Because that won't happen, primarily because everything in the world is changing, including internal political relations, and that's mostly when a serious discrepancy begins to occur between what is written and the actual state of affairs. After that, also due to the fact that, in reality, politics within the European Union, whatever it will be in the future, radical right, conservative or liberal, peaceful or ready for war, internal relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina will not be overly interested if it follows the foreign policy of the European Union, and in the end, because before and after everything, we remain alone with each other and the state parliament, which we elect ourselves and through which all decisions must pass.
It's unfortunate and even a serious injustice that this kind of paralyzing Dayton Constitution we live in still really reflects the state of affairs on the ground, which people have a hard time accepting, but that's just the way it is.
It is an additional misfortune that Croatia, which has some kind of influence within the European Union, thinks exclusively about the Croatian question in BiH and nothing else, at the end of all geographical, economic and social ties between these two countries.
And in the end, perhaps the biggest misfortune on the part of the third party is the reconceptualization of Serbian politics through the formula of the so-called of the Serbian world.
And in all this, the only coherent alternative is the European Union and nothing else. Maybe some will realize it in the meantime.
Bonus video:
