Attempts to make the Dayton agreement banal or to simplify it are against the spirit, wording and logic of that agreement, and Croatia advocates the equality of all the peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina so that the Croats, the Bosniaks and the Serbs could feel good, the Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Plenkovic underscored that Croatia has been defending the rights of the Croats to be on an equal footing with the other two peoples, and that Zagreb has been advocating the amending of the election legislation that would foil “the election engineering” that prevented Bosnia and Herzegovina Croats to have their legitimate representatives on several occasions.

The US State Department special envoy on electoral reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Matthew Palmer, said earlier on Wednesday the electoral law issue should be resolved by removing “ethnic prefixes” in the election of members of the country’s Presidency and members of the upper house of the parliament of the Bosniak-Croat Federation entity.

“Palmer is searching for compromise solutions,” Plenkovic said in his comment.

“We are against the banalisation and simplification of the agreement, which can be noticed from Dayton to Brussels, and it is against the spirit, wording and logic of the Dayton-Paris Agreement,” the Croatian PM.

“Our duty is to explain this to the international community and to advocate equality so that all — the Croats, the Serbs and the Bosniaks — could feel good in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

Croatia’s constitutional obligation is to care for the Croatians outside Croatia, no matter whether they are an ethnic minority or a constituent people, Plenković said.

He is hopeful of a compromise in Bosnia and Herzegovina for amending the election law before the 2022 polls.

Asked by the press about Tuesday’s meeting between Croatian President Zoran Milanovic and the leader of the Bosniak SDA party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegovic, Plenkovic said he had not attended the meeting and could not comment on that.

He only added that meetings such as that one with Izetbegovic and last week’s talks with the Bosnian grand mufti, Husein Kavazovic, in Zagreb, were attempts by Croatia to “raise the intensity of dialogue and the intensity of understanding, and to see that Bosnia and Herzegovina can function well and is stable” while being on its journey towards the EU.

Tensions in Western Balkans

The visit of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Western Balkan EU aspirants is part of the preparations for a summit meeting with Western Balkan representatives, set for next week in Slovenia.

Plenkovic said that earlier on Wednesday he had participated in consultations with several EU leaders in a bid to send the correct message ahead of the summit meeting.

We have agreed that we must make our engagement in the region stronger or “somebody else will be more influential in this region,” said Plenkovic but stopped short of identifying those centres of power.

The European Union is not the only one, he said.