The Interim Sub-committee meeting on Innovation, Information Society, Social Policy and Public Health, scheduled for 27 and 28 November in Mostar, was cancelled by the European Commission due to the inability of the BiH authorities to reach a common position on the topics to be discussed. For the same reasons, this Sub-committee was cancelled in June, which was already then without precedent as pointed out in this year’s Progress Report.

A Sub-committee meeting, established under the Stabilisation and Association/Interim Agreement, is meant to serve as a forum for dialogue between BiH and the European Commission on the approximation of BiH legislation to EU standards and policies in various policy areas. Therefore, BiH’s active participation in such meetings is the best illustration to the Commission that the country is really committed to the EU integration process.

The European Commission regrets that BiH and its citizens have lost once more the opportunity to directly benefit from this meeting where a number of new EU programmes for the period 2014-2020 were to be presented in the fields of science, research, education, youth, media and culture. This unfortunate development highlights, once more, the urgent need for setting up a functioning EU co-ordination mechanism as a prerequisite for its EU integration process.