Bosnia and Herzegovina has been striving to meet the requirements and join the European Union for more than 25 years, but it is still far from membership due to the inefficiency of the government and the lack of dialogue with civil society.
The lag in the integration process is the result of numerous factors, among the most important of which are: the long-standing inefficiency of the government at all levels in fulfilling key economic, political and legal criteria. The lack of a structured dialogue between institutions and civil society organizations (CSOs) has certainly had an adverse impact on the entire process. Experiences from countries in the region, which are far ahead of BiH in the EU pre-accession process, show that an engaged, well-connected and constructive civil society is one of the key factors in successful progress towards EU membership. The participation of CSOs not only contributes to more inclusive decision-making, but also ensures better transparency, accountability and sustainability of the reforms being implemented and affecting the quality of life of citizens.
In order to support the process of creating an enabling environment for strengthening the pre-accession process of BiH to the European Union, the association “Institute for Development and European Integration” (IREI), within the project “SMART Balkans – Civil Society for a Connected Western Balkans” funded by the “Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Norway”, in March 2025, began implementing the project “Stronger Civil Society in the Region – Faster Development and Accession to the European Union.” The aim of the project is to strengthen cooperation between the governmental civil sector and strengthen the participatory role of civil society in BiH during the pre-accession process to the EU.
Support and the basis for future more efficient action in this area will be two documents that will be prepared during the project:
- Analysis of the current state of relations between the civil and governmental sectors in the pre-accession process of BiH,
- Policy brief with recommendations and proposals for possible models for more efficient future cooperation
between civil society and government institutions at all levels.
The first document will be prepared based on the opinions and positions of representatives of the civil and government sectors in BiH, and the Policy Brief will be based on the experiences and positive examples of cooperation between governments and civil society in the EU pre-accession process in Montenegro, Croatia, North Macedonia and Serbia.
The activities carried out so far on the implementation of the project indicate that both government institutions and civil society organizations recognize the shortcomings in the previous cooperation and want to improve the process of joint action. We will inform you regularly on social networks about the progress in the project implementation process and the achieved results, on average once a week.
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