Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo

Sommario

1. Introduzione. – 2. Sovranità, responsabilità e ricostruzione degli Stati falliti. – 3. Prospettiva d’integrazione europea e riforme in Bosnia: un paradosso nel paradosso della sovranità? – 4. La riforma costituzionale in Bosnia: elementi normativi dello “EU’s hands-up statebuilding”. – 5. Conflitti metodologici ed istituzionali nell’approccio UE alle riforme in Bosnia. – 6. Conclusioni.

Abstract

This article explores the terms of a “paradox in the paradox” of sovereignty, which stems from the current EU-driven state-building of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). International state-building missions create a sovereignty paradox since the outside-in promotion of good governance in failed or failing states inevitably generates temporary constraints on sovereignty. When the highlyintrusive state-building project in BiH was launched, the external actors involved compromised crucial aspects of self-governance to establish fluid and independent interaction between multiethnic institutions. However, a further paradox has resulted from having a post-nation state organization, the EU, take the lead in the Bosnian multiethnic experiment: while it helps institutional reorganization, it prepares the state to give up certain sovereign prerogatives when the appropriate time to join the Union arrives. The interference created by EU-driven statebuilding is justified not by the goal of restoring independent Bosnian statehood, but rather by the presumption that the internal fractures and wounds of the country will be healed when the Bosnian sovereignty is subsumed by the greater European architecture. This article is divided into four sections. The first explores the current debate on the principle of sovereignty as an internationally shared responsibility, focusing on the attempts of some academics to turn this principle into a supposed “ethic” of internationally-driven statebuilding initiatives. The second section puts these ideas to the test in the specific case of BiH and sheds light on the fact that, as it is propelled on the path of EU integration, Bosnia is bound to “skip some steps” in the rehabilitation of its sovereign prerogatives. The third section examines the specific field of constitutional reform and introduces the concept of the EU’s “hands-up statebuilding”. The article develops this concept by focusing on constitutional reform, a field that enables us to understand the attitude of the EU towards sharing and undertaking responsibilities in one of its most complicated potential candidate member. Thanks to a series of interviews in Brussels and Sarajevo with EU policy makers and the analysis of official documents, the last section hints at some specific difficulties experienced by High Representative Schwarz-Schilling in his attempts to structure a coherent approach for the EU towards constitutional reform in Bosnia.