Following recent reports in BiH media, the EU Delegation/EUSR Office would like to clarify the following:

The European Commission proposed in June 2014 an EU legislative act (COM(2014) 386) to prolong the so-called exceptional trade measures for countries and territories participating in or linked to the European Union’s Stabilisation and Association process and suspending its application with regard to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Once adopted, the suspension of these autonomous trade privileges (duty free access to EU markets) for certain agricultural products from BiH would take effect on 1 January 2016, unless BiH before the end of 2015 agrees to adapt the EU-BiH Interim Agreement (or, once in force, the Stabilisation and Association Agreement) to take into account the traditional trade which existed between Croatia and BiH before Croatia became a member of the EU.

All other Western Balkan countries have agreed on an Adaptation Protocol with the EU except for BiH.

With regard to procedural aspects:  

The legislative process of adopting the Decision on prolonging/suspending the ATMs is currently ongoing. The lead Committee in the European Parliament (EP) is in fact the Committee on International Trade (INTA).  In advance of adopting its Opinion on the ATM proposal, this Committee has consulted the EP’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET). The draft opinion of the AFET committee was voted on 9 March.

The AFET opinion supports the Commission proposal, while expressing the expectation that the outstanding issue [ie. adaptation of the Interim Agreement or the Stabilisation and Association Agreement] would be resolved before the end of 2015.  As the opinion says: “The Rapporteur [MEP Preda] would however like to underline that the suspension of the trade preferences for Bosnia and Herzegovina should be seen as an incentive to resolve the current disagreement with the EU over the adaptation of the Interim Agreement. The Rapporteur hopes that the new authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina will take advantage of the positive impetus given by the adoption of the new EU Approach regarding the country by the Foreign Affairs Council on 15 December 2014 to solve also this outstanding issue”

It is to be noted that the AFET opinion is not the final Opinion of the European Parliament. The AFET opinion will feed into the Opinion of the INTA Committee which will vote on its Opinion on 19 March 2015.  

And subsequently, the EP Plenary will vote its final Opinion in April (to be confirmed). The final stage of the legislative procedure is the adoption by the Council of the European Union of the proposal, which should take place before the summer.  

At this point it is therefore too early to draw any conclusions regarding the final contents or adoption of the Commission’s proposal.