Presenting the key elements of the Commission's 2012 progress report on Bosnia, he said Bosnia considerably lagged behind its neighbours.
There is virtually no progress in Bosnia, Sorensen said, recalling that Croatia was on the threshold of EU membership but also that the European perspective would open for the other countries in the region, including Albania and Kosovo, when they met the requirements.
He said Croatia's accession on 1 July 2013 would pose a particular challenge to Bosnia as it would have to meet strict quality criteria if it wanted to continue exporting its products via Croatia.
The EU has given Bosnia EUR 19 million for the necessary adjustments but the job is not done, said Sorensen.
He went on to say that so far, Bosnian politicians had only verbally expressed their commitment to European integration, without doing virtually anything.
In the progress report, the European Commission concluded that Bosnia made limited progress in meeting the political requirements for EU membership and that the government crisis which escalated mid-year stopped everything.
There was no particular progress in judicial reform either, but the Commission concluded that political attacks continued to impact the judiciary in the country.
There is still no uniform position on the fundamental issues of the economic and fiscal policies, and the privatisation and reorganisation of public companies has been at a dead end for four years now, the report said, adding that necessary progress was also absent in the free movement of people, customs and taxation, public procurement, employment, social issues, and statistics.
Sorensen said the most important short-term tasks were known - constitutional and electoral law reform in order to eliminate discrimination against ethnic minorities in the election process, and the definition of "one voice" with which the country could communicate with Brussels.
When that is carried out, the Stabilisation and Association Agreement will go into force and it will be possible to talk about applying for EU membership, he added.