Chairman of Council of Ministers Dr Denis Zvizdić’s Reflection to Great Britain Referendum

The EU family is tied by economic, security and geopolitical interests on the principle of voluntariness, and this is where its greatness lies. However, the idea of united Europe failed in Great Britain. British citizens assessed their state should make it better outside the block 28, and they have had right to make such assessment, based on the Lisbon Treaty. 

As the EU is not to join to overnight, the same goes for leaving it. What concrete exit arrangements and agreements will be made by Britain with those staying in the Union and how it would affect the British pound, GDP and other economic indicators of Great Britain is not certain at present. Nevertheless, the Union is to continue functioning in after exit time.

Eurosceptic groups might wonder, as expected following the referendum in Great Britain, what the membership aspiring countries look for in a group, just abandoned by someone like Britain? The EU integration is the matter of both voluntariness and interest. It is about a commitment of Bosnia and Herzegovina to be a part of the European Union. The wish is incited by facts, rather than sentiments, and the facts being that the EU economy is No. 1 in the world, that it is the society of knowledge and innovations and that in no place in the world people, at average, have better life.

We live in the world of threatened security, chronic deficit of resources and of climate change, causing more migrations than all war conflicts together. To be aware of these facts and remain outside integrations, in our case the EU, is to be afforded only by rare, resource independent and geopolitically uninteresting states. BIH is surely not in the club.

The results of the referendum in Great Britain must not discourage BIH to continue and accelerate its integration into the EU, because it is what BIH citizens expect by vast majority (76%), and it is an obligation of the present to future generations.

Despite BREXIT, our country has no other alternative but to become a member of the European Union in foreseeable future, rightly we it belongs.

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