Bosnia-Herzegovina Reaches Agreement on Government

Ministry positions divided among peoples. Serbs got one government member and two ministries, Croats three, Bosniaks four ministries.

At Wednesday’s meeting in Sarajevo called by the chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Nebojsa Radmanovic, representatives of the country’s seven political parties reached an agreement on the allocation of positions in the Council of Ministers of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Heads of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Party of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), Party of Democratic Progress (PDP), the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina (HDZ BiH), HDZ 1990 and the People’s Party Work for Prosperity, managed to form a parliamentary majority for the coming four years, three months following the parliamentary elections. They did not allocate ministerial functions to parties, but, rather, according to nationality.

Chairman of the Council of Ministers will be a Bosnian Serb, Nikola Spiric of the SNSD.

Serbs get two, Croatis three and Bosniaks four ministries 

Bosnian Serbs got two ministries – the ministry of civil affairs and the ministry of economic relations and foreign trade.

Bosniaks, represented by a coalition comprising the SDA and the Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina, received four ministries: the foreign ministry, security ministry, the ministry of human rights and refugees and the defence ministry.

Croats got three ministries – the ministry of transport and communications, the justice ministry and the ministry of the treasury and finance.

In the first eight months of the rotation, Beriz Belkic of the Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina will chair the Bosnian parliament’s House of Representatives. Niko Lozancic of the HDZ BiH and Miodrag Zivkovic of the SNSD were elected deputies.

The parties’ leaders also signed an agreement on programme goals, in which the chief goal is defined conditions whose fulfilment will lead towards the signing of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the European Commission.

Elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina took part last October, from which time the government had not been formed at the state level. The Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska, in which Milorad Dodik’s SNSD won by a landslide in the entity’s elections, formed its executive and legislative authorities soon after, while the Bosnian Federation entity still has not constituted either parliament homes.