"We can send our answers in one of the official EU languages," Zvizdic told reporters. When asked whether that meant in Croatian, Zvizdic confirmed as much and recalled that Croatian was the 24th official language in the Union.
The European Commission sent its questionnaire with 3,200 questions to Bosnian authorities in December 2016 and whether Bosnia and Herzegovina will be awarded candidate status depends on the answers sent from Sarajevo.
With all the problems related to completing the questionnaire, which requires collecting data from various government levels, the problem of translating them into English has also arisen as there is not one translation agency in the country with at least 50 employees which, under the law on public procurement, is required for applying to a tender for translation services.
Two such tenders have already fallen through and hiring a translation agency from Croatia was also considered. Zvizdic has now presented a totally new solution and explained that it would also be the simplest, as the answers would only need to be proofread.
Zvizdic said that he was convinced that despite all the problems, the deadline for submitting the questionnaire could be met and that Bosnia could be awarded candidate status at the end of this year, or early in 2018.
Even if the deadline is not met by a month or two, he said, that should not be a problem because Bosnia and Herzegovina was previously blocked on its journey to the EU and NATO for "a hundred months."