EU leaders grant Bosnia 'candidate status' for membership

European Union leaders on Dec. 15 granted Bosniacandidate status to join the union, putting the volatile Balkan nation at the start of a long road to membership, Qazet.az reports.

Russia's war on Ukraine has breathed fresh life into the EU's willingness to consider letting in more of its eastern neighbours after years of stasis. Bosnia now becomes the third country after conflict-ravaged Ukraine and Moldova to be granted candidate status in the past six months.

The EU is concerned that powers such as Russia or China might spread their influence into the Balkans if countries hopeful of joining the bloc are thwarted.EU leaders gave their approval for Bosnia to become a membership candidate at a summit in Brussels.

European Council president Charles Michel called the step "a strong signal to the people, but also a clear expectation for the new authorities to deliver on reforms."

"The future of the Western Balkans is in the EU," he wrote on Twitter. The move comes despite long-standing concerns over the political situation in Bosnia, a country of three million people burdened with ethnic divisions since its devastating war three decades ago. It remains partitioned between a Serb entity and a Muslim-Croat federation connected by a weak central government.

It has a dysfunctional administrative system created by the 1995 Dayton Agreement that succeeded in ending the conflict in the 1990s but largely failed in providing a framework for the country's political development. The EU's executive branch, the European Commission, has laid out 14 priorities for reform that it insists Bosnia must make good on before it can move on to the next stage of opening formal accession negotiations.