The statement was signed by the head of the EU Delegation to BiH, Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, British Ambassador Edward Ferguson, US Ambassador Maureen Cormack, French Ambassador Claire Bodonyi and Germany's Charge D'Affaires Adrian Pollmann.
On Monday, they visited Banja Luka together with representatives of the Italian Embassy and sent a message of this nature to officials in RS ahead of a session of the entity's parliament which was to decide on a request by RS President Milorad Dodik to call the referendum.
Dodik asked that parliament makes a decision to call a referendum, for September most probably, whereby citizens would state whether the BiH State Court and State Prosecutor's Office should exist and whether their decisions should apply in RS.
The referendum question compiled by Dodik himself is more than suggestive and refers to those institutions as having been "imposed by anti-constitutional decisions" by the international community's High Representative to BiH.
Dodik fails to mention that laws on the BiH State Court and State Prosecutor's Office were adopted by the State Parliament in 2004 and that MPs of Dodik's party took part in the vote.
The Western diplomats have said that the judiciary at the state level is crucially important for sovereignty and stability in BiH.
We are deeply concerned with the fact that the proposed referendum represents an anti-constitutional attempt not at reform but to undermine those bodies and that this would be a direct threat to the sovereignty and security of the entire country, which cannot be tolerated, the statement says.