Christian Schmidt calls for the ‘immediate cessation of all activities that undermine the Dayton Peace Agreement’.
The international high representative for Bosnia has accused the political leaders of the autonomous Serb region of seeking to destabilize the country, following the region’s passage of legislation to bar the Bosnian national police and judiciary.
Lawmakers in Republika Srpska, the country’s autonomous Serb republic, approved the legislation on Thursday after a state court banned its separatist leader, Milorad Dodik, from politics for six years and sentenced him to one year in prison for refusing to comply with decisions made by the high representative, Christian Schmidt.
The separatist move could trigger a constitutional crisis in ethnically divided post-war Bosnia.
Schmidt, who is tasked with overseeing the Dayton Accords that ended the 1992-95 intercommunal war between Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Bosniak Muslims—a conflict that claimed over 100,000 lives—accused the political leaders of the autonomous region of undermining the state.
The Dayton Accords divided Bosnia into two autonomous regions: a Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska.
A weak central government connects these regions under the high representative, who holds significant powers, including the authority to dismiss political leaders.
On Friday, Schmidt called for the “immediate cessation of all activities that undermine the Dayton Peace Agreement and the constitutional and legal order of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” according to a statement from his office.
“These actions by the ruling coalition in Republika Srpska seek to destabilize the institutions exercising constitutional responsibilities of the State,” the statement added.
Dodik was indicted in 2023 after he signed legislation suspending the rulings of Bosnia’s constitutional court and Schmidt, thereby violating the peace agreement.
Dodik, who has long advocated for the region to secede and form a union with neighboring Serbia, rejected the court ruling and urged lawmakers in the autonomous Serb republic to vote to ban the state police and judiciary.
“We believe this creates momentum for us to do this without the use of force,” Dodik said, adding that the region aims to roll back reforms and establish its own state judiciary, police, and military to counter secessionist tendencies.
Following Thursday’s vote, Bosnian Serb parliamentary speaker Nenad Stevandic stated that 49 of the 52 deputies in the assembly supported the legislation.
However, the prime minister of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat region, Nermin Niksic, strongly criticized Dodik’s push to ban the country’s institutions on Friday.
“I am not ready to participate in any talks or discuss continuing political cooperation with the institutions of Republika Srpska until all these actions against the constitution, the Dayton peace agreement, and the state are stopped and annulled,” Niksic said on social media.
Denis Becirovic, the Bosnian Muslim member of the tripartite presidency, also condemned Dodik and Republika Srpska officials, describing their actions as an “attack on the country’s constitutional order.”
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