Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot meet the conditions for EU candidate status because it violates them on a daily basis, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Thursday, criticising PM Andrej Plenkovic for standing up to Brussels on oil delivery to Serbia but failing to do so on the issue of the status of the Bosnian Croats.

The European Commission on Wednesday recommended candidate status for BiH on the condition the country implements a set of reforms and adopts several laws in the area of judiciary, fight against corruption and freedom of expression.

“Yes to candidate status as a symbolic encouragement to BiH, but one part of the political scene there is working actively, in cooperation with the international community, on destroying the Croats,” said Milanovic, referring to one of three main ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

BiH “cannot” meet the conditions for candidate status because “it violates them on a daily basis,” he stressed.

The amendments to the election law imposed by High Representative Christian Schmidt are belated and insufficient, added Milanovic.

Milanovic said that he was the first to advocate candidate status for BiH by having proposed blocking the awarding of candidate status for Ukraine and Moldova at the European Council if BiH was not included in the same package.

“We’ll see how the government acts when in a month’s time a decision is made on the composition of the Althea mission,” he said in reference to the EU’s military mission in BiH in which it was assessed that Croatian troops cannot participate “because someone in Brussels has decided so.”

Support to Dodik

In a comment on the elections in BiH and the recount of ballots in elections for the president of the Serb-majority entity Republika Srpska, in which Milorad Dodik won 30,000 more votes than his main rival Jelena Trivic, Milanovic said Dodik was actually “the most acceptable politician for Croatia and Croats.”

Dodik “has run afoul of somebody abroad” and now Trivic, “who is saying monumental stupidities”, is being favoured, Milanovic said, wondering “in whose interest it is to cause chaos”.