Zenica. Photo: flickr/habeebee
Zenica. Photo: flickr/habeebee

This section offers close to 250 key texts and background documents related to Bosnia and Herzegovina's EU accession process. Key documents on the EU enlargement process in general can be found in ESI's background document library on EU enlargement.

EU monitoring reports

All official Commission reports on Bosnia and Herzegovina prepared by DG Enlargement:

Key EU strategy documents

Since 2005 Bosnia and Herzegovina and all other candidate and potential candidate countries have been included in the European Commission's annual strategy paper on EU Enlargement.

Contractual Relations

The major agreements between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the EU:

Key European Council conclusions

The European Council, the highest decision making body of the EU, takes key decisions with regard to EU enlargement. As Bosnia and Herzegovina has not yet submitted an official application for membership, there are no council conclusions related especially to Bosnia and Herzegovina's accession process.

In November 2010, the Council took one of its most significant decisions on Bosnia and Herzegovina, approving the Commission proposal of 27 May 2010 to abolish visa restrictions for citizens of the country. The decision entered into force on 15 December 2010.

Key documents prepared by the Bosnian government

Bosnia and Herzegovina's progress towards EU accession has been slow. Although a milestone was reached with the signing of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement on 16 June 2008, three years later the country has not yet even submitted a membership application. A number of strategic and political documents detail the government's current efforts to move closer to EU accession:

Pre-accession funds

In the EU's 2007-2013 budget cycle all pre-accession programmes were merged into a single mechanism, the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA). The IPA has five components. Potential candidate countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina so far could only benefit from two of them – general capacity building and cross border cooperation. EC support was previously channelled mainly through the CARDS programme, designed for the Western Balkans in 2000 for a six-year period.

INSTRUMENT FOR PRE-ACCESSION ASSISTANCE (IPA)

For details about the multi-annual indicative financial frameworks, including information and financial data on all recipient countries, visit the respective section of ESI's background document library on EU enlargement.

You can find more documents on the two IPA components in the Bosnian section of the webpage of DG Enlargement.

COMPONENT I: TRANSITION ASSISTANCE AND INSTITUTION BUILDING

Other programmes and project fiches for the Transition Assistance and Institution Building component can be accessed on the website of DG Enlargement.

COMPONENT II: CROSS-BORDER CO-OPERATION

Other documents and programmes on Cross-Border Co-operation can be found here.

For the European Commission's annual reports on all EU pre-accession funds, click here.

CARDS

Before IPA, EU assistance was channelled through the Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilisation (CARDS) programme. In 2000, various EU assistance programmes for the Western Balkans were streamlined into this single tool, which was designed to support the Stabilisation and Association process.

Peace Implementation Council (PIC)

The Peace Implementation Council (PIC) was established after the Dayton Peace Agreement in late 1995. It comprises 55 countries and agencies. Its steering board acts as the "executive arm of the PIC." The OHR website describes the PIC steering board's function as follows:

"The Steering Board provides the High Representative with political guidance. In Sarajevo, the High Representative chairs weekly meetings of the Ambassadors to BiH of the Steering Board members. In addition, the Steering Board meets at the level of political directors three times a year."

The Steering Board members are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, the Presidency of the European Union, the European Commission, and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which is represented by Turkey.

Here you can find all communiqués and statements issued by the PIC since its inception.

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9 April 2015

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