On 22 October, ECR Group Member Pavel Branda (deputy mayor of Rádlo municipality in the Czech Republic) attended the 25th meeting of the European Committee of the Regions Working Group on relations with the Western Balkans, held in the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Mr Branda assured participants of our Group's strong support for continuing the enlargement process.

The speakers touched upon the recent veto on opening accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia, which was widely lamented and characterised as a historical mistake by those present at the meeting. During the discussion, Mr Branda emphasised that while the Western Balkans countries have clear physical borders and mentality differences, they all share a common desire to join the EU: "It is therefore of vital importance to send these countries a clear message reassuring them of their common EU future".

The welcome speech by Nevenko Herceg, Prime Minister of Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, was followed by a discussion on recent developments in relations between the EU and BiH. The focus of the meeting was the EU's role in solving the Mostar election issue, which is holding the country back on its EU integration path. In the city of Mostar (population 105 000), no local election has been held since 2008. A legal logjam has led to a situation where an entire European city has been deprived of local democracy – nobody under the age of 29 has ever been able to vote in a local election.

The meeting enabled local speakers to highlight the complexity of the constitutional system in BiH and related legal problems, which the panelists saw as one of the leading causes of the current political deadlock in Mostar. While their position at the meeting was largely to seek solutions from the EU to BiH's internal problems, they were advised to start by establishing a single constitutional court whose decisions would be implemented in full.

Speakers stressed the importance of developing political dialogue ahead of the 2020 elections in BiH, and called for smoothly run elections as the first step in returning Mostar to its citizens and moving the country forward.