nam 22 uu 4500 10.17176/20230901-183000-0 DE-Verfassungsblog cr||||| 230901s2023||||xx#|||||o|||| ||| 0|eng|| 10.17176/20230901-183000-0 doi eng 342 23 Woelk, Jens Author aut (orcid)0000-0002-6557-3104 Opening Pandora’s Box? - On the Kovačević Case and the European Court of Human Rights’ fundamental criticism of the electoral system in Bosnia and Herzegovina Woelk, Jens Verfassungsblog 2023-09-01 Text txt rdacontent Computermedien c rdamedia Online-Ressource cr rdacarrier Bosnia and Herzegovina is widely known as a “complex State” that has struggled to progress towards EU accession due to internal divisions. More than 25 years after the war ended, the country seems to remain stuck in transition. Recently, secession claims from Republika Srpska (RS) have become more concrete, a crisis has been triggered around the Constitutional Court. Amid these dynamic developments, a judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) could cause tensions, if not even the opening of Pandora’s box: After a series of previous judgments of a similar kind, on 29 August, 2023, the ECtHR published its judgment in the case of Kovačević v. Bosnia and Herzegovina. The judgment is a fundamental and systemic critique of the power-sharing arrangements and clearly determines the direction any constitutional amendment or reform needs to take: The only possible way is to reduce the institutional relevance of ethnicity and of the privileged status of ‘constituent peoples’. CC BY-SA 4.0 Bosnia and Herzegovina Dayton Election law Max Steinbeis Verfassungsblog gGmbH Verfassungsblog 2366-7044 https://verfassungsblog.de/opening-pandoras-box/ raw object