Political disagreements, blockade and deadlock on the European road. These are the main features of the Bosnian political scene in 2025.
One of the reasons is the collapse of the coalition at the state level, which is why the sessions of the BiH Council of Ministers are often cancelled, and no laws of a reform nature are adopted at the sessions of the parliament.
The paralysis of the authorities led to a several-month standstill on the European road.
At the end of the year, the European Commission approved the Reform Agenda of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a key step for obtaining 976.6 million euros from the EU Instrument for Reforms and Growth, a document on which there was no agreement in BiH for almost two years.
BiH received EU candidate status in December 2022, and membership negotiations were approved in March 2024.
However, the negotiations have still not started, because the conditions that the country received in the recommendation of the European Commission – the appointment of the chief negotiator and the adoption of the law on the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council – have not been met to date.
Without that, as the European Union has repeatedly emphasized, Bosnia and Herzegovina will not be able to count on accession negotiations with the EU.
In addition to all that, the year 2025 passed with frequent international warnings about the country’s exposure to Russia and growing Chinese influence.
What was happening on the political front?
Already in January, the state-level coalition consisting of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) of Milorad Dodik, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of BiH and the Troika parties gathered around the Social Democratic Party (SDP, Narod i Pravda, and Naša stranka) disintegrated.
It was the result of several months of accumulation of political conflicts and blockades.
In response to the annulment of unconstitutional entity laws on state property, the SNSD blocked, paralyzed or contested the work of state institutions, including the work of the Criminal Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the state police agency SIPA.
A special target of the authorities in the RS was the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina after the decisions that prevented the attempt to unconstitutionally transfer jurisdiction or state property to this entity.
At the beginning of the year, the entity government tried to introduce a register of “foreign agents” modeled after Russia and criminalized defamation, thereby endangering freedom of expression and association.
How did the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina work?
SNSD MPs very often boycotted or voted against the bill.
Additional tensions were caused by the dismissal of this party’s staff from the leadership of the state parliament, as well as attempts to reach an agreement between the parties from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the opposition from the RS on the redistribution of power.
At the same time, HDZ BiH insisted on changes to the Election Law in order to ensure “legitimate representation of Croats”.
The verdict against Milorad Dodik and the escalation of the crisis
In February, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina sentenced Milorad Dodik to prison and a multi-year ban on political activity for disobeying the decisions of the High Representative.
The court process against Dodik began after he signed the decree in July 2023, which brought into force two laws, previously adopted in the entity parliament.
These are legal acts by which the decisions of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina are not applied in the territory of the RS.
After the verdict, the entity authorities passed new laws that tried to prevent the operation of state judicial institutions and security agencies on the entity’s territory.
This was followed by investigations by the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina due to suspicion of an attack on the constitutional order, and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina also issued warrants for Dodik, the then president of the RS, during that period.
Nenad Stevandić, the president of the entity parliament, and Radovan Višković, the then prime minister of the RS government, were also on the warrant for not responding to calls from judicial authorities and obstructing investigations.
All three, although wanted, crossed the state border on several occasions, and it was never officially answered how they did it.
International pressures and de-escalation
In October, the United States lifted sanctions against Milorad Dodik and 48 other people from his close family, political and economic environment.
After that, all laws passed in the RS, which were unconstitutional, were withdrawn.
By the way, in mid-August, Dodik was officially stripped of his mandate as president of the RS, and he bought off a one-year prison sentence for around 16,000 euros.
Early elections for the new president of the RS were also held in November, but the Central Election Commission annulled the voting results due to election fraud in more than 160 polling stations. Repeated elections should be held in these locations.
The European road is at a standstill even at the end of the year
Bosnia and Herzegovina missed all chances to open the process of accession negotiations in 2025.
At the end of September, a compromise was barely found for the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina to adopt the Reform Agenda, which is one of the preconditions for BiH to receive funds from the European Union’s Growth Plan for the Western Balkans.
In this way, an additional 100 million euros will not be lost from the fund, which originally amounted to nearly 1 billion euros for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Previously, Bosnia and Herzegovina lost 108 million euros in July, because it did not meet the deadlines for adopting the reform agenda, and that money was redirected to other countries in the region.
The authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina have not been able to agree on a reform plan for almost two years, because the entities and cantons are arguing over jurisdiction, laws and reforms in several sectors, such as education, social policy and the labor market.
So far, even the laws that the European Commission marked as a condition for opening negotiation chapters have not been adopted.
Neither a chief negotiator nor a functional negotiation structure has been appointed.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has not aligned itself with the EU’s foreign policy, which, among other things, means the sanctions of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Russia, which are opposed by the representatives of the RS, and the introduction of visas for citizens of Turkey or Arab countries, which the rulers of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina oppose.
The EU also demands the deletion of constitutional ethnic-territorial discrimination in the election of members of the BiH Presidency, the reform of the State Criminal Court of BiH and the Constitutional Court of BiH.
Brussels also insists on more functional state institutions. This includes filling the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has been missing two judges from Republika Srpska for years, and which the entity authorities do not even want to propose.
All of these are key elements without which, the EU says, there is no continuation of negotiations.
Election year 2026
General elections should be held in Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 2026.
As political analyst Adnan Huskić assesses for Radio Free Europe, the 2026 election year is taking place “in a complex international environment.”
He concludes that the elections in 2026 could also bring changes, which could affect the reduction of the “conflict narrative” in the country.
By the way, for that election process, it is expected that, for the first time in the history of the country, it will be carried out with the help of advanced technologies, such as biometric identification of voters and optical scanning of ballots, it says. RSE.
