scholarly journals Traditional Home Slaughtering of Animals in the Framework of EU Legislation. Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Südosteuropa ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 532-553
Author(s):  
Ismet Kumalić

Abstract Traditional home slaughtering of animals is a widespread social practice in the Western Balkans, bringing together families, neighbours, and friends, and contributing to the rise of social capital. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a multicultural country where traditional home slaughtering of animals is mostly practised as seasonal slaughtering by Christian communities and as religious slaughtering by Muslim communities. In the framework of existing EU legislation, meat that comes from home slaughtering can be used for private consumption only. However, these rules are not fully aligned with the practices existing on the ground. This article argues that the Western Balkans’ integration into the EU can affect the sustainability of these practices, and it is therefore necessary to amend the relevant legislation and policies to ensure the implementation of EU regulations while respecting the traditional way of communal meat sharing.

Author(s):  
Andi Hoxhaj ◽  
Fabian Zhilla

Abstract This article offers a comparative analysis of the covid-19 legal measures and model of governance adopted in the Western Balkans countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo) and its impact on the state of the rule of law, and ability of parliament and civil society to scrutinise government decisions. The article assesses the governments’ approaches to introducing and enforcing covid-19 legal measures, and shows examples of how covid-19 has exposed more openly the weaknesses in the existing system of checks and balances in the Western Balkans. The article offers new insights into how covid-19 presented a new opportunity for leaders in the Western Balkans to implement further their authoritarian model of governance in undermining the rule of law. This article offers suggestions on how the EU could respond, through its accession conditionality instruments and civil society, to redirect this trend towards more state capture.


AGROFOR ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Łukasz AMBROZIAK

The aim of the paper is to compare the competitive positions of Poland and of sixcountries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) in their trade in agri-food products with theEuropean Union (EU) in 2010–2015. To this end, the synthetic tradecompetitiveness index (CI) was created, being the arithmetic average of twonormalised indices of the competitive position, i.e. the trade coverage index (TC)and the Balassa revealed comparative advantages index (RCA). The study is basedon the trade data from the WITS – World Integrated Trade Solution database(Comtrade, HS – Harmonised System 2002), expressed in USD. Agri-foodproducts are understood as products classified in chapters 01–24 of the HarmonisedCommodity Description and Coding System (HS). The research results show thatonly in trade of 5 product groups no country from the Western Balkans competedwith Poland in the EU market. In other product groups which were competitive inPolish exports Poland competed in the EU market with some of the WesternBalkan countries.


Südosteuropa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasiia Kudlenko

AbstractSecurity sector reform (SSR) has become an important part of the EU’s efforts to transform the Western Balkans from a conflict-ridden area into a stable and democratic part of Europe. This paper studies SSR in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as an illustration of the multifaceted and complex Europeanization policies employed by the EU in the region. It does not present a study of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) missions, as there is already a wealth of material available on this subject, but offers instead a broader examination of changes in two sectors of BiH’s security system with the aim of improving understanding of the EU’s impact on the domestic environments of candidate states. Its main argument is that the EU used police and intelligence reforms in Bosnia, both of which were part and parcel of the SSR efforts in the country, as state-building tools. But because domestic competence in Bosnia was lacking and the EU was rather inexperienced in implementing SSR, the reforms have had a mixed record of success and reveal the limitations of the region’s Europeanization.


2019 ◽  
pp. 157-175
Author(s):  
Olivera Vušović

TRANSLATION TOOLS FOR EU LEGISLATION: EUROPEAN PRACTICES AND THE CASE OF BCMS The aim of this paper is to analyse the issue of memory through tools for storing linguistic data (terminological databases, parallel corpora, thesauri, glossaries and dictionaries) deployed in the context of the translation of EU legislation. On the one hand, we present an overview of the tools used within the EU, distinguished by a complex and highly specific linguistic regime, currently including 24 official languages. On the other hand, we review the preparations and implementation of various tools in the former Serbo-Croatian countries, namely the language framework of their accession to the EU. Within the BCMS languages, a parallel has to be drawn between Croatia, which has been a member of the EU since 2013, with the most developed mechanisms in this area, of the one part, and Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, of the other part. Keywords: European Union, translation, tools, databases, accession to the EU, BCMS.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-156
Author(s):  
A. M. Ponamareva

The paper provides a retrospective analysis of the European Union’s policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and its possible outcomes for BiH progress towards positive sovereignty amid growing international tensions in the Western Balkans. The paper draws on a vast body of both Russian and Western academic literature on the collapse of Yugoslavia, BiH under the Dayton Agreements, the possibilities of democracy building in divided societies, as well as on a range of official documents adopted by various EU institutions. On that basis the author assesses the prospects for BiH to survive in its current administrative-territorial borders. The paper examines the outcomes of the Bosnian War, as well as the main effects of the external governance mechanisms implementation in BiH. This allows the author to trace the evolution of the EU policy towards BiH and to reassess the country’s progress in terms of Eurointegration. Since the EU has refused to grant countries, which do not meet the Copenhagen criteria, the status of a member state ‘in advance’, the main conclusions on the prospects of the BiH accession to the EU are drawn from the European Commission’s 2020 Report on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Following the logic and the structure of the report, the author assesses the BiH efforts to meet the set targets and criteria, such as establishing a stable democratic political system, promoting the development of civil society institutions and the rule of law, combating corruption and organized crime, ensuring the protection of human rights and freedoms, migration management, strengthening economy and regional cooperation. The report of the European Commission clearly hints that most obstacles for BiH progress towards EU membership arise from the lack of support from the Republika Srpska and that it is impossible to overcome its obstruction within the framework of Dayton Agreements. However, the author argues that this fixation on revision of the Dayton Agreements, accompanied by excessive pressure on the Serbian community in BiH may provoke protective reaction of the Serbian community, resulting in a rising nationalism and disintegration of Bosnia and Herzegovina.


Author(s):  
Qerimi Donikë

This chapter presents Western Balkans perspectives on the Hague Principles. The term ‘Western Balkans’ is used to denominate the countries of the Balkan peninsula which are not member of the European Union: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Serbia. The countries of the Western Balkans have had a rather troubled past and the beginning of this century found them (re)building their countries, including their legislation. Given the urgency of other areas of law, Private International Law (PIL) was not in the focus of most of these countries’ reforms, academia, or court practice until recently. Unlike the EU regulations and Hague Conventions, the Hague Principles are not listed among the ‘inspirations’ of any of the current draft laws in the region. Experts who helped in drafting the ongoing reforms, however, have testified to the vast collection of international instruments and PIL codifications of other European countries that were used as inspiration when preparing these drafts. These preparations might have included the Hague Principles as well.


Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) belongs to the group of countries of the Western Balkans, which has the status of potential candidate for EU membership. However, to achieve candidate status and full EU membership, it is necessary to carry out complex structural reforms that should ensure convergence towards EU countries, which will be a long and difficult process. The aim of this paper is to point to the specificities of economic and political transformations in BiH in the context of economic changes occurring in the environment and which can significantly affect the EU accession process. This paper gives an overview of the basic economic features of B & H, as well as projections on the movement of certain economic categories in the forthcoming period. An analysis of the position of B & H in the group of countries of the Western Balkans and the perspective of economic growth was conducted.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 285-296
Author(s):  
Dragan Gajin

Western Balkan jurisdictions (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia (FYROM)) are often outside the focus of the competition community in the EU. This paper aims to rectify that, by providing an overview of the most interesting competition law developments in these jurisdictions during 2017. The overview will show that, despite similarities in their competition legislation, the observed jurisdictions differ when it comes to their priorities in competition law enforcement: while for some the accent is on merger control, for others it is on antitrust. The paper also highlights certain peculiarities of the observed jurisdictions, even though they are all based on the EU model. These include the existence of a notification system with respect to individual exemptions of restrictive agreements in three out of the four observed jurisdictions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-38
Author(s):  
Simon Sweeney

This article assesses the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) in the Western Balkans, with a focus on EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Althea is a military operation that conducts mainly civilian functions as well as the training of the Bah Armed Forces; its 'civilianisation' is symptomatic of CSDP's orientation as a mainly civilian crisis management instrument. Althea works within the framework of the Union's 'comprehensive approach' to regional development and the accession process of the Western Balkans to the EU. I argue that the mission displays the bureaucratic modus operandi of CSDP and not a Grand Strategy approach. Nevertheless, CSDP's incremental, lowest-common-denominator, low cost, low risk bureaucratic politics have enabled a form of emergent strategy that complements the Union's multi-instrument and comprehensive approach to development throughout the Western Balkans. I further suggest that the EU Global Strategy (EUGS) and the newly activated Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) provides opportunities for EU member states to build on low key emergent strategy to ensure that CSDP develops the substance and actor ness needed to address current threats.


2020 ◽  
pp. 179-198
Author(s):  
Monika Szynol

At the end of the second decade of the 21st century the European Union (EU) – presenting a new strategy of enlargement policy, organising an official summit of the state leaders and devoting to potential accessions the meeting of the Council of the EU – recalled that the future of the Western Balkans lies in the EU. Therefore, there is a reasonable question: whether the intensification of the EU’s enlargement policy will affect favourably Bosnia and Herzegovina, a state considered as a potential candidate for the membership since 2003? Basing on (inter alia) official documents issued by the EU institutions, macroeconomic data and in relation to the EU’s policy towards the Western Balkans region, it is worthwhile to suppose, that – despite numerous (political, economic, social) deficits and weaknesses – Bosnia and Herzegovina, which applied for membership in the EU in 2016, will receive the status of an official candidate country soon (in the thir d decade of the 21st c entury).


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