Leaders of the three parties that won the October 2018 election have agreed on forming the state government during a meeting with EU Special Representative Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, Bosnia’s main Croat party said in a press release on Monday.

The three strongest national parties could not agree on how to form the government since they won the election.

This is mainly due to political bickering over the country’s NATO membership.

The Bosniak member of the tripartite Presidency said he refuses to greenlight the prime minister proposed by the Bosnian Serb member because the candidate is opposed to the country’s membership with the alliance. Bosnia has previously pursued NATO membership but in recent years Bosnian Serb politicians have changed their minds.

Bosnia’s Croat ethnic parties have meanwhile been complaining about the election law in the country.  

The Croat member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency is left-leaning Zeljko Komsic and nationalist Croat parties, especially Bosnia’s Croat Democratic Union (HDZ), have been arguing that he is not a legitimate representative of their ethnic group since he was elected thanks to mainly Bosniak votes while most of the Bosnian Croats really voted for HDZ leader Dragan Covic.  

The leaders of the Bosniak Party for Democratic Action (SDA), the HDZ and the Serb Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) discussed how to break the deadlock on Monday.  

Following the meeting, the HDZ said that an agreement was achieved and that a set of principles for the formation of the state-level government have been signed.  

Covic said that it is of “key importance” for the HDZ that in a joint statement between the political leaders and the operational programme of the future Council of Ministers and parliamentary majority states the implementation of rulings by domestic and European courts which relate to the state Election Law “so that the constitutional and institutional equality of the peoples and citizens and their legitimate representation in accordance is ensured” as a priority.  

“This is in the interest of all peoples and citizens in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Covic said, according to the HDZ press release.

He said the deal was also good for building Bosnia and Herzegovina as a modern European state in which the equality of constitutional peoples will be respected consistently and which will with its commitment for political accountability progress on the path toward a better future.