BiH is Still the Worst in the Region

Banja Luka 11^th October 2012.- The European Commission has published a Progress Report for Bosnia and Herzegovina  2012, which once again points out the inefficiency in curbing corruption in BiH. It is symptomatic that the European Commission has been repeating the same findings and recommendations, which the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the results of failing to meet the conditions for membership in the European Union, ignore.

In this year’s Progress Report, as well as in those of previous years, has been stated about insufficient implementation of the legal framework regulating the fight against corruption, especially the Law on Conflict of Interest, and the Law on Financing of Political Parties. The European Commission has once again pointed out the incompatibility of the Laws at various levels of government, especially the failure to adopt the recommendations of the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO).

Once again it was warned about the delay on the implementation of the Anti-Corruption Agency, and a general lack of capacity of the institutions which are supposed to enforce anti-corruption laws.

Judicial inefficiency and lack of prosecution of major cases of corruption, nepotism in the public sector, incompatibility of regulations in the access to information area, lack of protection of whistleblowers, etc. are problems which the European Commission has been indicating for years.  However, one of the conclusions, which has been repeated, is that BiH is at the beginning of the fight against corruption because of the lack of political consensus, and the fact that the fight against corruption remains only in the promises of the authorities without adequate actions.

TI BiH hopes that this Progress Report will serve as clear message to the leaders in BiH that current frivolous attitude towards the fight against corruption cannot lead BiH to membership in the EU, and the fact that countries in the region have not acquired the candidate status until they started with implementation of anti-corruption reforms and with decisive prosecution of  corruption cases, can serve us as evidence.