Strasbourg, 09.10.2009 – The prospects of adopting a new constitution for Bosnia and Herzegovina before the next parliamentary elections, expected to be held in Autumn 2010, look “rather gloomy”, say the monitoring co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in their latest assessment.
“The positions of various stakeholders are extremely polarised and an agreement on a comprehensive package of constitutional amendments is almost impossible to reach,” said Mevlüt Çavusoglu (Turkey, EDG) and Kimmo Sasi (Finland, EPP/CD) in an information note declassified this week by the Assembly’s Monitoring Committee.
“Constitution-making is a serious exercise which requires building a broad consensus about the key features of the reform. It should not be abused to satisfy immediate goals relating to the electoral campaign,” they concluded. Key stakeholders should launch, without delay, a meaningful dialogue about changes to the Constitution, drawing on help from the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, in order to make Bosnia and Herzegovina “a normal European state”.
Depending on progress, the co-rapporteurs proposed a possible debate on this question at the Assembly’s January 2010 part-session.
