NO ROOM FOR SINGLE LAW ON STATE PROPERTY IN BiH

BANJA LUKA, FEBRUARY 2 /SRNA/ – Law professor Ljubinko Mitrović told SRNA that only two countries in the world have a single law on state property - Montenegro and Uzbekistan, while countries like Switzerland, Germany, the United States, Belgium, and other complex states or federation of states, such as BiH, do not have such a law, which is one of the indicators that such a law has no place in BiH, despite the persistent demands of Bosniak politicians who ignore the BiH Constitution.

"There is no mention of the word `property` in the BiH Constitution, therefore Republika Srpska’s demands of not having a property as a topic to discuss as this issue has been resolved in the Dayton Peace Agreement are logical, as the Agreement specifies the division between Republika Srpska and the FBiH in a 49:51 ratio," said Mitrović. He reiterates that the BiH Constitution does not contain any provision granting any BiH-level authority the competence to regulate, through legislative or any other normative activity, the issue of state property, property rights, not even the Parliamentary Assembly or the Constitutional Court of BiH. Mitrović pointed out that two years ago, after the first meeting, he left the OHR working group that was supposed to deal with the property issue, because there was no agreement on what constitutes state property. He stated that this issue has been raised before, not just yesterday, citing that it was discussed in 2004, 2008, 2012, and so on, and that property is a boundary that should not be crossed. Mitrović concluded that the attempt to seize the property of Republika Srpska is just one of the ways in which efforts are being made to abolish Republika Srpska. According to the bill on state property that was sent to parliamentary procedure, municipalities, cities, cantons, and entities are not even mentioned. "The proposal is to create a unified register of state property to be managed at the BiH level, followed by a transfer of authority through the establishment of a Directorate managing state property registry," Mitrović noted. In his view, squares, rivers, lakes, hospitals, motorways, and waterworks should all be considered the property of BiH. He also believes it is high time to mark the inter-entity boundary line.