BiH needs better bureaucracy, not more bureaucracy, the EU Special Representative, Valentin Inzko, said today, and he called on BiH parliamentarians “to help ensure that citizens get the benefit of an efficient civil service and stop having to carry the burden of a politically controlled bureaucracy.”

“Instead of proactively supporting efforts to make the bureaucracy – at municipal, cantonal, entity and state level – more cost effective and more efficient, political parties have tried to re-politicise appointments procedures and establish party control over whole areas of the civil service,” the EUSR said.

“I cannot overstate the role that parliamentarians can play in helping to resolve this,” he continued. “It is a political, not an administrative problem, and it needs a political solution. The underlying argument for changing the status quo is clear – the role of civil servants is to serve the public, not to serve political masters.”

Noting that today’s session of the Parliament for Europe took place against a backdrop of continuing political gridlock, the EUSR said “<>>those who are being penalised by the failure to reach political consensus are the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” and he called on parliamentarians to find ways of “alleviating the problems currently being created by the intransigence of party leaders.”

Slovenian Foreign<><><<>>Minister Samuel Žbogar and Bulgarian Foreign<>Minister Nickolay Mladenov took part in today’s session of the Parliament for Europe, an EUSR initiative that brings BiH parliamentarians together with their counterparts from EU member states to discuss EU integration issues. The EUSR described their participation as “testimony to the European Union’s serious and sustained commitment to helping Bosnia and Herzegovina move along the path of integration.”