Christian Schmidt, the international community's High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, used his special competencies and passed two decisions on Saturday, blocking two recently adopted laws in Republika Srpska entity – one ignoring the decisions of Bosnia's Constitutional Court and other banning the publication of his decisions in the entity's Official Gazette. Pročitaj više

Addressing a press conference, Schmidt said that the recent law changes passed at the entity parliament of Republika Srpska, Bosnia’s Serb-majority entity, directly violate constitutional order in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this the Dayton Peace Agreement, which, as he said, stopped a horrible war.

It is our mandate to make sure something like that happens never again, Schmidt was quoted as saying through a translator.

He stressed that entity parliaments have no competencies to derogate the provisions of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina or to regulate the jurisdiction of key Dayton institutions such as the Constitutional Court of BiH.

This is an attack on the Constitutional Court of BiH and an attempt to jeoaprdise the legal and constitutional framework of the country, including the key elements of the Dayton Agreement such as the high Representative’s decisions, Schmidt said in his speech.

According to him, the citizens of Republika Srpska entity are the ones to suffer the consequences of the irresponsible moves of the ruling coalition, whom he said he respected like free citizens of a free country.

The peace envoy also passed a decision on amending the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The law is amended in a way that all the actions undermining the constitutional order of the country will be treated as a crime, and the law changes will secure a legal ground for prosecutors to take action, Schmidt said.

He stressed that all those damaging the constitutional order must be processed and will bear consequences for their actions.

In the end, Schmidt conveyed, as he said, a warning.

“All the options are sill on table,” he said, suggesting that the Bonn powers give him a spectrum of competencies that he can still use, and called the political actors to come to their senses.

The High Representative’s decisions will be published on his website on the same day and will come into force as of today.