The members of the European Parliament from the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party announced during a visit to Mostar, southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, on Friday that they would seek greater EU involvement in amending the country's electoral legislation.

“The key message we are conveying to the European Parliament is that either the constitutional rights of all three constituent peoples, including the Croats as the smallest community, will be respected or there will be no peaceful and stable Bosnia and Herzegovina that we all wish for,” MEP Karlo Ressler said.

He and his colleagues met with leaders of the Croatian People’s Assembly (HNS) to discuss the electoral reform process, which has reached a standstill after the mediators – Matthew Palmer, US State Department special envoy, and Angelina Eichhorst, managing director for Europe and Central Asia at the European External Action Service – cancelled their visit last month.

Ressler said that the current situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina was “highly uncertain and dangerous” because of a number of unresolved political disputes in the country. He said he was confident that the reform could be carried out while respecting the rights of individuals and the constituent peoples.

“We don’t see that the rights of individuals are contrary to the rights of ethnic communities, in this case the constituent peoples as stated in the BiH Constitution,” he added.

Zeljana Zovko warned that war rhetoric prevailed and that the situation was reaching “worrying proportions”.  She stressed that the Croats had had their political representatives imposed on them several times.

Tomislav Sokol said that the EU institutions had for years been promoting the wrong perception about “a civil, unitary Bosnia and Herzegovina,” adding that this was a disguise for establishing hegemony over the Croats. He cited the example of Belgium where the Flemish never used their numerical superiority to outvote the Walloons, saying that that would be the end of that country.

“Belgium has survived because it carried out several reforms to decentralise itself, with most of the powers having been transferred to its regions and the political communities of the Flemish and Walloons. If they hadn’t done so, Belgium certainly wouldn’t exist today,” Sokol said.

He said that Belgium was a good example of how Bosnia and Herzegovina could protect collective and individual rights and achieve decentralisation. “The future of Bosnia and Herzegovina lies in more subsidiarity and greater protection of the collective rights of its political peoples,” Sokol said.

Suncana Glavak said that by visiting Mostar the HDZ’s MEPs had shown “unity about all important issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”