SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), June 30 (SeeNews) – Bosnia's population shrank by 19.3% to 3,531,159 in 22 years, the State Statistics Agency said on Thursday upon the release of the complete results of the country's first census, carried out in 2013.
The publication of the census results - on which the EU has repeatedly insisted - was delayed for three years over methodological disagreements with the bureau for statistics of one of Bosnia's autonomous entities, the Serb Republic.
Bosnia is made up of two autonomous entities - the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic - and a neutral, self-governing administrative unit, the Brcko District.
According to the results, which Bosnia's State Statistics Agency released live on broadcaster BHT, 62.85% of Bosnia's total population resides in the larger entity - the Muslim-Croat Federation, 34.79% lives in the Serb Republic, while only 2.4% resides in the Brcko District.
Sarajevo is Bosnia's largest city with 275,524 residents, followed by Banja Luka with 185,042.
As much as 50.11% of the total population declared themselves Bosniaks, 30.78% identified themselves as Serbs and 15.43% as Croatians.
Additionally, the census revealed that 50.7% of Bosnia's population practices Islam, 30.75% are Eastern Orthodox Christians and 15.19% are Catholics.
The census results are expected to raise tension in a country where memories of the 1992-1995 conflict remain fresh, particularly after revealing that the Federation is ethnically 70.40% Bosniak, while the Serb Republic is 81.51% Serb, meaning that the return of expelled people to both regions has been minor in the decades since the war.
Since the census was conducted in 2013, the Serb Republic's statistics agency has had many complaints against the methods used by the other two agencies - at the state level and that of the Federation - arguing that non-permanent residents who have been out of the country for over 12 months will be included in the total number of residents.
However, despite an inability to reach a conclusion on the methodology, the state office made a decision last month to publish the results without the Serb Republic's approval.
The Serb Republic's national assembly announced last week it will not accept the "illegal and harmful" method used for census data processing. It added that its institutions will not recognise the census results nor will they have any legal force.
“The decision to publish the results of the census further complicates the situation in Bosnia,” the president of the smaller entity, Milorad Dodik, also said earlier this week.
Political analyst, Srdjan Puhalo, however told SeeNews that the census should not have any effects on the tripartite system in place in Bosnia.
"The system is so designed that there is no over-voting, that is, it does not allow for the imposition of the will of any people, regardless of their number," he explained.
The European Union has for some time demanded Bosnia provide a figure for its total population in order to allow for economic planning and reforms.
"The European Union attaches crucial importance to the census as essential to perform accurate economic and social planning... It is also important in the context of European integration including the implementation of the reform agenda," Pieter Everaers, a top official of the EU’s statistics office Eurostat, said in a statement published by the EU Delegation in Bosnia in May.
Timely publication of the census results is crucial considering the relevance of the population figures, he added at the time.
Bosnia submitted an EU membership application in February. At the time Bosnia's presidency chairman, Dragan Covic, said he hoped that Bosnia would be given the status of a candidate country in 2017.
Bosnia's last census was conducted prior to its in independence in 1991. Back then, 43.47% of people declared themselves as Muslims by nationality, 31.21% as Serbs, 17.38% as Croats and 5.54% as Yugoslavians.