The EU won't support any ethnic divisions. That's why politicians from Republika Srpska (RS) should promptly put their plans on division or some other paths back to the drawers out of which they took them, Sarajevo's Dnevni Avaz daily quoted him as saying in Tuesday's issue. He added that it would be best if such plans disappeared for good.
Swoboda's statements came in the wake of suggestions by the media and some politicians in the Serb entity that, in comparison to the Croat-Bosniak Federation entity, RS has come a long way in reforms required for EU accession and that, therefore, the EU should apply to Bosnia the model it tried by admitting Cyprus without the northern, Turkish part of the island.
Such statements have been made by RS Regional Development Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic and the president of the opposition Democratic Progress Party, Mladen Ivanic.
Cvijanovic, the entity's unofficial foreign minister, has said the differences in the meeting of EU membership criteria by Bosnia's two entities will force Europe to reconsider Bosnia's accession path. "We must realise that BiH is only packaging. Everything important that's happening is happening on the entity level," she has said.
Ivanic has said RS should insist on the Cypriot model. But Swoboda says the EU's goal is an integral Cyprus.
Cyprus can't be a desirable model for the EU. There's only one Cyprus for the EU and it will be supported only as integral, Swoboda said, calling on Bosnian politicians to continue implementing the reforms to which they had committed.
The EU expects Bosnia to send to the state parliament by August 31 a draft amendment to the Constitution to eliminate discrimination against national minorities. Representatives of BiH and the European Commission are expected to meet again in early September to analyse reforms. However, because of the political crisis and the crisis in Bosnia's ruling coalition, the deadlines will certainly not be met.