European Commission recommends opening EU membership talks with Bosnia

The European Commission on Tuesday recommended opening European Union membership talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina, saying the Balkan country had made more progress on reforms over the past year than in the previous decade.
“Of course, more progress is necessary to join the Union but the country is showing that it can deliver on its membership criteria and on its citizens’ aspirations to be part of our family,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
Bosnia, which suffers from ethnic rivalries and secession threats nearly three decades after its war in the 1990s, has long languished near the back of the queue for EU membership.
But it has benefited from a new openness to EU enlargement among EU officials who have said Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine showed the dangers of having “grey zones” destabilised by foreign powers on the EU’s borders.
A decision to open accession talks requires the unanimous approval of the bloc’s 27 member countries, some of which have previously expressed doubts about whether Bosnia is close to meeting the criteria to begin negotiations.
EU leaders are expected to discuss the EU executive’s recommendation at a summit in Brussels next week.