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At a meeting held at the European Commission Delegation last month, ministers of justice of both entities in Bosnia agreed that a joint proposal on courts at state level would be prepared by the end of January.
The deadline has not been met, because no agreement on the powers of the Bosnian state court and the future appellate court has been reached.
The Ministry of Justice in the majority-Serb entity, Republika Srpska, told BIRN that disputes remained on “the so-called expanded competencies of the existing law on the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The mainly Serbian entity wants the court to be competent only “over crimes covered by the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina or other laws adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly,” the ministry said.
It says the existing law enables an abuse of powers because the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina can exempt cases from the entity courts at its own discretion.
“We hope a consensus on this issue will be reached within a reasonable time so that an agreed draft law can enter parliamentary procedure,” the ministry said.
Jamila Milovic-Halilovic, spokesperson of the Delegation of the European Union in Bosnia, said that at expert meetings in late January, European legal experts spoke to members of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, HJPC, and members of a working group preparing the law with the Ministry of Justice.
“The expert meetings were held with the aim of discussing legal issues which have still not been agreed, pertaining to the competencies of judicial bodies at state level,” Milovic-Halilovic recalled.
The HJPC says it adopted conclusions about the powers of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina late last year, adding that conclusions were then submitted to the ministries of justice.
This is the second time that announced deadlines for the preparation of a draft law have been missed
Last autumn, the ministers of justice of both entities and of Bosnia announced that a draft law would be agreed by the beginning of the year.
Disputes over the state-level judiciary have been going on for years in Bosnia, with the state court fearing that Bosnian Serb reforms aim at abolishing the state-level judiciary altogether.
Republika Srpska says that it just wants to clarify the division of authority between the state and entities.
