On Wednesday, September 7, at the Mediacentar Sarajevo, Analitika – Centar for Social Research and the Open Society Fund Bosnia and Herzegovina organized the conference “How to Execute the European Court of Human Rights Decision in the Case of Sejdić and Finci v. BiH: Challenges and Modalities for Reforming the BiH Presidency and the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH”.

Some 50 representatives of local and international organizations active in the field of human rights protection attended the event. As Edin Hodžić, Head of Public Law Program at the Analitika, has stated, the aim of the conference was to foster and promote dialogue in expert circles, and to propose the best solutions for the execution of the decision in the Sejdić and Finci v. BiH case.

During the 1st session, participants Nenad Stojanović, PhD, Zentrum für Demokratie Aarau, Universität Zürich, Daniel Bochsler, PhD, Zentrum für Demokratie Aarau, Universität Zürich, Svjetlana Nedimović, PhD, Puls demokratije and Goran Marković, PhD, Faculty of Law, University of Istočno Sarajevo, presented various proposals for reforming the structure, mode of election and functioning of the BiH Presidency. The combination of politological, political theory and constitutional considerations related to this issue encouraged a dynamic discussion among attendants. The key distinction hereby identified was between the normatively desirable and realistically feasible solutions. Models of election of the BiH Presidency based on the principles of the geometric mean, for the BiH context relatively new proposals, drew special attention during this session.

The 2nd session focused on presenting and analyzing models for reforming the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH. Participants in this session were Florian Bieber, PhD, Karl-Franzens Universität Graz, Edin Sarcevic, PhD, Juristenfakultät, Universität Leipzig and Foundation Centre for Public Law, and Edin Hodzic, LLM, Analitika. The discussions demonstrated that reforming the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH is a far more complex issue than is the case with the BiH Presidency. Analyzed proposals ranged from the complete abolition of the House of Peoples, to the radical reduction of its powers, to its transformation into a house of territorial units but not peoples of BiH.

A constructive discussion during the conference once again pointed to the fact that it is necessary to primarily involve an expert public in the process of executing the decision in the case of Sejdić and Finci v. BiH and in questions of constitutional change in general. Analitika and our partners remain committed to that goal.