Speaking at the meeting of the Working Group on Western Balkans, organised by the EU Committee of the Regions, on 22 October in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), both Congress Vice-President Barbara TOCE and the Chair of the Monitoring Committee, Leen VERBEEK, highlighted the past and potential future work of the Congress Reflection Group on Mostar.

The Group, involving also the Chair of the Working Group on Western Balkans, Franz SCHAUSBERGER, was created in 2017, to help alleviate the political impasse affecting Mostar’s inability to hold local elections for more than a decade. Activities of the Group are a concrete example of co-operation between the Congress and the Committee of the Regions which made the relationship between BiH and the European Union, the regional history and the underlining issues affecting the political landscape of Mostar the leading theme of this meeting.

Speakers included, in addition to representatives from the EU, the Congress and the city administration, also Ms Irma BARALIJA a Mostar citizen who filed a lawsuit to the Strasbourg Human Rights Court over the ongoing situation of non-elections in her city.

Suggestions by the Congress speakers about the building of democratic participation in Mostar and the implementation of innovative models such as a consensus conference over the next year leading up to the October 2020 elections, were received positively.