Eight years after Bosnia and Herzegovina formally applied for EU membership, the bloc has decided to open accession talks with the country during a summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday (21 March).
“Today’s decision is a key step forward on your EU path. Now the hard work needs to continue,” president of the European Council Charles Michel posted on X (formerly Twitter).
Member states agreed to call on the commission to prepare the negotiating framework for Bosnia with a view to its adoption by the council the moment “all relevant steps set out in the commission’s recommendation of 12 October 2022 are taken”, according to the summit’s conclusions. Meaning, Bosnia will need to keep working on its reforms.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has been a potential candidate since 2003, although it only formally applied to join the EU in February 2016 — and was granted candidate status in December 2022.
Earlier this month, the commission published a report on the progress made by Bosnia and Herzegovina on the membership criteria and issued the recommendation to open accession talks — so it was only pending Thursday night’s political greenlight by member states.
“More progress has been achieved in just over a year than in a whole decade,” commission’s president Ursula von der Leyen told the EU plenary to coincide with the report, adding that “more progress is necessary to join our union, but the country is showing it can deliver”.
Dutch acting prime minister Mark Rutte made similar remarks when entering the Brussels summit on Thursday.
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