Strasbourg, 04.02.2009 – The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Lluís Maria de Puig, has noted the hard work being done by Bosnia and Herzegovina to overcome inter-ethnic division, despite the complexity of the situation, but said it is still “struggling” to preserve stability and build a functional democratic state.
Addressing a session of the “Parliament for Europe” in Sarajevo yesterday, he urged greater efforts to bring domestic laws into line with the European legal order, strengthen state institutions and urgently carry out constitutional reform using the expertise of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission.
Legal experts from the Commission had already presented a set of pragmatic options and recommendations for broad constitutional reform, he pointed out: “I urge you to keep focus and move forward on this, with the highest priority.”
The President also warned of a “huge gap” between standards on paper in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the reality on the ground, and called for human rights standards to be “rooted in everyday life”. Highlighting four key Council of Europe texts – on human rights, minority rights, social rights and torture – he said it was up to state authorities to ensure that the country’s international obligations were implemented at all levels.
After his address, Mr de Puig launched the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian translations of his book International parliaments, which highlights the growing global importance of these bodies and provides a guide to around forty of them.
