Laws passed by the autonomous Republika Srpska region reject the authority of the federal police and judiciary.
Published On 7 Mar 2025
Bosnia’s Constitutional Court has suspended legislation passed by the autonomous Republika Srpska region which rejects the authority of the federal police and judiciary on its territory.
The court said on Friday that it was “temporarily suspending” the laws that Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik pushed through the regional parliament earlier this week.
The laws were passed days after a court in Sarajevo sentenced Dodik to a year in prison and banned from office for six years for refusing to comply with decisions made by Christian Schmidt – the international high representative charged with overseeing Bosnia’s peace accords.
Since the end of Bosnia’s inter-ethnic conflict in the 1990s, the country has consisted of two autonomous regions – Republika Srpska and a Muslim-Croat federation, which are linked by a weak central government.
Bosnian officials say that Dodik’s laws violate the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the country’s 1992-95 war, binding the two entities under joint institutions, including the army, top courts and tax authorities.
Dodik on Thursday said he would ignore a summons from Bosnian state prosecutors investigating him for allegedly undermining the country’s cons