The EU Delegation to BiH launched the fifth cycle of the Parliament for Europe (PfE) initiative on 22 February discussing the issues related to High Level Dialogue Roadmap benchmarks, the main priorities from the 2012 Progress Report as well as the role of parliamentarians in achieving a credible membership application and increasing the pace of legal harmonization.
The EUSR developed the “Parliament for Europe” initiative with the aim of assisting parliamentarians in meeting the demanding legislative agenda that lies ahead of the country seeking to fulfil the obligations arising from the Stabilisation and Association Agreement. The Project aims to encourage an active, informed and constructive engagement on the EU integration process. The purpose is to raise the BiH parliamentarians’ awareness of their vital role in helping BiH meet EU accession requirements and reap the benefits that accrue from this.
This initiative has engaged 120 members of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly until now, numerous BH government officials as well as members of the European Parliament, senior EC officials and representatives of EU member States. In total, 24 sessions have been held since November 2008 when this initiative started. The top EU policy makers devoted considerable quantity of their time and effort to this initiative and shared their rich experience with the aim to additionally help BiH on her path to the EU. Among those present was the President of the European Commission Mr. José Manuel Barroso, the European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy Štefan Füle, the Director for Albania, BiH, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo Issues in the European Commission Dr. Pierre Mirel. Foreign ministers and figures such are Dr. Lluís Maria de Puig, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the former Prime Minister of Italy Dr. Giuliano Amato also offer their contribution during this forum. Several government and parliament officials from the neighbouring countries also shared their experience and expertise encouraging BiH to make progress and to catch up with the rest of the region.
The topics discussed at the sessions provided an in-depth survey of several European integration related issues. In particular, the topics dealt with the role of parliament in the process of EU integration, the relations between the legislative and executive branches of government, the role of the Joint Committee for European integration in the accession process and the SAA implementation in BiH, the essence of the European Partnership documents and their significance for the accession process and Visa liberalization requirements.
On the basis extensive feedback after each cycle of the PfE, it was concluded that the awareness and knowledge of the nature and the magnitude of tasks have been raised considerably. The current cycle of the PfE, now composed of the BiH EU integration committees, both entity parliaments and the Brcko District Assembly, will run untilJuneand will focus on turning all these efforts into concrete results. The aim is to prepare the ground work for a more concrete work of the local initiative called Parliamentary forum for European integration, that was established by the PfE and which has the same composition. The plan is to secure the complimentary work of these two forums in which the later could result in EU harmonization of concrete legislative proposals on the entire territory of BiH.
