The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg issued a verdict according to which the entities should not be separate electoral units for the election of members of the BiH Presidency and delegates to the House of Peoples of BiH, but there should be only one electoral unit for those two electoral levels.
The court in Strasbourg passed this verdict following the appeal of Slaven Kovačević, the advisor to the Croatian member of the BiH presidency Željko Komšić.
The verdict found that Kovačević's rights were violated in terms of voting for candidates for the Presidency of BiH and the House of Peoples of the state parliament, because "he is not able to vote for candidates who do not belong to the constituent nations and do not live in a certain entity".
The Sarajevo activist Klix (klix.ba) stated that Kovačević appealed to the Court in Strasbourg because during the general elections in BiH in 2022 he could not vote for the candidates for the Presidency of BiH and indirectly for the House of Peoples of BiH, who "represent his political views in the best way attitudes, because they are not members of the three constitutive nations nor do they live in a 'real' entity".
Kovačević complained that due to "a combination of territorial and ethnic conditions, he could not vote for the candidates he believed would best protect his interests."
The court panel, which consisted of seven judges, in a ratio of six to one, adopted the arguments of Kovačević.
The court, as stated, determined that such conditions are discriminatory and contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights in terms of the right to participate in the elections for the House of Peoples of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly.
Additionally, because the House of Peoples must approve all laws, just like the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliament, all segments of society must be represented in it.
The court therefore determined that the current political system in BiH made ethnic representation more important than anything else, thereby strengthening ethnic divisions in the country.
The Court concluded that, although the Convention did not prohibit member states of the Council of Europe from treating certain groups differently in order to redress inequality between them, no constituent people were an endangered minority.
The court also found discrimination in the case of impossibility to vote for members of the BiH Presidency if they do not come from a certain constituent nation or do not live in a certain entity.
The verdict stated that "no one should be forced to vote only along prescribed ethnic lines, regardless of their political views."
The European Court of Human Rights has assessed that, even if it were to be maintained, ethnic representation must be secondary in the political system and include ethnic representation from the entire state territory.
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