Milorad Dodik. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0

A joint Bosnian Serb-Croat pledge to paralyse the work of the state-level government in Bosnia and Herzegovina and obstruct the country’s work on joining the EU unless foreign judges are removed from the Constitutional Court has triggered new political tensions and raised questions about the consequences for the tense and divided country.

“It is clear that the main goal [of this initiative] is to put the Constitutional Court under political and ethnic control,” Sarajevo-based political analyst Adnan Huskic told BIRN.

The initiative was launched after a meeting on Friday between Milorad Dodik, the president of Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska and the leader of the ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, and Dragan Covic, the Croat member of the tripartite state presidency and the leader of the country’s main Croat party, the Croat Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina, HDZ, at which the two agreed to work together to change the law.

“By the end of this month, the SNSD and HDZ should have a consistent view on the text of the law on the Constitutional Court,” Covic told media after the meeting.