Commission cancels €5m of Bosnia’s pre-accession funding

Bosnian authorities failed to agree on how the money should be spent.

The European Commission has cancelled €5 million in pre-accession assistance for Bosnia and Herzegovina after the authorities failed to agree how the funds should be spent.

An additional €9m in aid to the impoverished country has been suspended as the two entities into which Bosnia is divided continue to squabble over which level of government should be in charge of managing European Union funds. They now have until 1 October to put effective co-ordination arrangements in place for the suspended aid, or face another cancellation.

The measures were agreed on Tuesday (10 September) in a meeting of the joint committee that monitors the disbursement of funds from the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA). This year’s IPA allocation for Bosnia is €108.8m.

The €5m in cancelled funding was supposed to go to farmers to enable them to draw on rural-development assistance, and to the authorities to draft a country-wide strategic plan for rural development. Bosnia’s agriculture sector is uncompetitive and has been ravaged by cheap imports from the EU. Bosnia is no longer able to export agricultural products to Croatia after Croatia joined the Union on 1 July, because Bosnia’s constituent parts cannot agree who should be in charge of certifying goods for export to the EU. Croatia was Bosnia’s main export market for dairy and meat.

Štefan Füle, the European commissioner for enlargement and neighbourhood policy, has invited the leaders of Bosnia’s main political parties to talks in Brussels on 1 October on the country’s lack of progress across the EU-set reform agenda.

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