Gerald Knaus on Bosnia at the Annual Foreign Policy Meeting of the Böll Foundation

Gerald Knaus was invited to speak at the Annual Foreign Policy Meeting of the green Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin. Under the title "The European Union and the Balkan states 15 years after the outbreak of the war: Moving towards a common foreign and security policy?" was to reflect on possible developments in the light of the region's European aspirations.

Panel participants included Tanja Topic (Friedrich Ebert Foundation), Joachim Bleicker (German Federal Foreign Office), Mirza Kusljugic (Political analyst), Ernst Köhler (Historian and publicist) and Gerald Knaus. Other participants included Wolfgang Petritsch (former EU Special Envoy for Kosovo), Joost Lagendijk (MEP) and Jamie Patrick Shea (Director of Policy Planning, NATO).

Mr Knaus spoke on the evolution of ESI's perception of the situation on Bosnia Herzegovina since we released our study "Making Federalism Work – A Radical proposal for Practical Reform". In this study, ESI advocated progressively abolish the Federation, and with it the constitutional category of "Entity". The result would be a simplified, three-layered federal state with twelve autonomous units: the ten cantons of the current Federation, Republika Srpska and the District of Brcko. This would represent a fundamental change to the structure of the state, turning it into a normal, European federal system with central, regional and municipal governments.