While both political forces and citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to support EU membership, it seems that the EU does not fully understand some challenges the country had to overcome so far and is introducing criteria and conditions for it which have not been introduced to other potential candidates in the past, the Chairman of the BiH Council of Ministers, Zoran Tegeltija, said at the international conference on the Western Balkans in Ohrid.

Tegeltija spoke at the 2021 Prespa Forum Dialogue International Conference entitled ‘Western Balkans: The Missing Puzzle For Completing Europe’ alongside the prime ministers of other Western Balkan countries.

He argued that the vast majority of BiH citizens, regardless of their ethnic background, are in favour of EU integration and that the country is prepared to implement reforms towards this goal “not for the sake of Europe, but for our own sake.”

“Sometimes it seems to me that Europe fails to recognise the problems and successes achieved in the Western Balkans,” he said.

Tegeltija noted that BiH was the only country in the former state of Yugoslavia without a single kilometre of highway.

“It had to transform its economy in order to be exposed to large markets, and it faced the problems of privatization,” he added.

Another issue was the Covid-19 pandemic, which he said “captured” the state which was left to itself and felt “even forgotten at one point.”

“For our own money, we could not buy the same products. And then all of a sudden today they are being offered to us as donations,” he said, referring to the problem of the procurement of vaccines against Covid-19 in the country.

“These are things that are discouraging, these are things that create mistrust among our citizens,” he stressed.

Tegeltija said that the ‘Mini Schengen’ initiative is an excellent framework within which cooperation between the countries of the region can be realized in regard to economy, society, democracy and minority rights, and called on officials to build better infrastructure and trust.

He praised a recent agreement to abolish roaming charges covering Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Serbia, which came into force on Thursday, arguing that it represents a good example of cooperation.

He noted that Macedonia became an EU candidate country in 2005 and that he is doing his best for BiH to become one as well in 2021.

“But there is the question of what happens next when you become a candidate country. We need to work for ourselves, not just for the EU,” he concluded.