SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), December 27 (SeeNews) – Bosnia’s tripartite presidency on Thursday named Nikola Spiric as the country’s new Prime Minister, a position he left last month, Bosnian media reported on Thursday.
The Presidency has today decided to appoint Nikola Spiric as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, privately held news agency ONASA quoted the presidency rotating chairman Zeljko Komsic as telling a news conference in Sarajevo.
Spiric’s appointment has to be approved by the country’s central parliament to take effect.
Spiric resigned Prime Minister of Bosnia on November 1 to protest legislative changes introduced by the international community in October with the aim to streamline Bosnia’s slow and cumbersome central institutions.
Following the successful solution of the crisis, he was re-nominated by his party, the main Bosnian Serb party Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), which said earlier this month it had gained the support of all major Muslim and Croat parties in Bosnia’s central government for
War-divided Bosnia consists of a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serb Republic, each having its own parliament and government. Bosnia also has a weaker central parliament and government. The European Union has said the central-level institutions should be strengthened if the country is to become a member of the bloc one day. The head of the central government should be a political figure agreeable to the biggest parties of the three main ethnic groups in Bosnia - Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats.
Spiric’s resignation in November led to one of Bosnia’s biggest political crises since the end of the 1992-95 war, as Bosnian Serbs saw the changes as eating away at their autonomy and leverage power in the central institutions. But after more than a month of political squabble, Bosnian leaders and the top international peace envoy in Bosnia Miroslav Lajcak, who initiated the changes, reached a mutually acceptable agreement, thus opening the way for the country to establish closer ties with the EU.
Earlier this month, Bosnia initialled a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU, the first step to eventual membership.
A functional central government is seen as key for the continuation of EU-oriented reforms in Bosnia.