Assessing the Europeanization of Bosnia and Herzegovina: A litmus test for the European Union

The concept of Europeanization has become very popular in studies of European integration and particularly in analyses on the post-communist countries undergoing extensive transformation on the road to European Union membership. Although the Europeanization process has been quite successful in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the same scenario has not played out in the western Balkans region. With the purpose of analysing the effectiveness and impact of the Europeanization process in the western Balkans, the main subject of the paper is Bosnia and Herzegovina’s EU-related reform processes. Although Bosnia has been undergoing thorough Europeanizing reforms since the late 1990s, when the country entered the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP), it is still an unstable and dysfunctional country. That makes it the perfect case for assessing the possible shortcomings of the Europeanization process. Thus far, most scholars have concluded that domestic political elites in Bosnia are the only party responsible for Bosnia’s political deadlock. However, this paper analyses the continued Bosnian deadlock from a different perspective, trying to figure out the degree of responsibility the European Union shares in the country’s Europeanization process. Although uncooperative Bosnian political elites are to a great extent responsible for the continued political and social status quo, EU leaders are not faultless either. In fact, so far European leaders have often appeared to be deeply divided, incoherent, and short-sighted in terms of Europeanization policies in Bosnia, thus further deepening the political deadlock in the country. Therefore, we can ask whether Bosnia represents a litmus test which the EU has failed.