After the Republika Srpska Assembly passed a set of laws challenging the authority of Bosnia's state-level institutions in the Serb-majority entity, Bosniaks have denounced what they called a 'coup d'état'.
Azem Kurtic, February 28, 2025
The National Assembly of Republika Srpska votes on the bills without the opposition’s representatives. Photo: NSRS
As tensions over the conviction of Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik continue, Bosniak representatives in the Serb-dominated entity’s legislature announced on Friday that they will contest new attempts by Serb lawmakers to challenge the authority of the country’s state-level institutions.
Bosniak lawmakers said they will appeal to the entity’s Constitutional Court after the Republika Srpska National Assembly voted to ban Bosnia’s state-level court and prosecutor’s office, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council and the State Investigation and Protection Agency from exercising jurisdiction in the entity.
Alija Tabakovic, president of the Bosniak caucus in the entity’s Council of Peoples, said the Constitutional Court of Republika Srpska would ultimately decide on the matter. As a result, implementing and enforcing the newly-adopted laws could take up to two months.
Serb lawmakers adopted the new legislation late Thursday in a response to the state court’s first-instance verdict convicting Dodik. He was sentenced on Wednesday to one year in prison and a six-year ban on holding the presidential office for defying the decisions of the High Representative, the international official overseeing Bosnia’s post-war peace agreement.
Lawmakers in the Republika Srpska National Assembly also adopted legislation to establish a ‘special register’ for non-profit organisations – the so-called ‘foreign agents law’ that critics believe will target NGOs and independent media. Opposition parties boycotted the vote.
Members of the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA, in Bosnia’s state parliament have called for an urgent session to respond to the new Republika Srpska laws.
“The only way these laws can be amended or repealed is through the proper procedure in the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the SDA stated, calling the Bosnian Serb moves a “coup d’état”.
During the same session, the NSRS voted changes to the entity’s criminal code, allowing the prosecution to process “any Serb who stays working in these [state-level] institutions”.
The Bosniak member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Denis Becorovic, has said he will hold a meeting on Friday with High Representative Christian Schmidt, international ambassadors from Bosnia’s Peace
Implementation Council and commanders of the peacekeeping force EUFOR and the NATO office in Sarajevo.
Critics of the Bosnian Serb legislation have called on Schmidt to intervene and annul the new laws.
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