PRISTINA – Exactly 30 years ago, the Dayton Peace Accords ended the bloody war in Bosnia, but created an overly complex governance structure from which the country has failed to move on.
Thirty years later, Bosnia remains at peace, but its 1995 governance model has barely evolved. Officials and analysts now argue that stagnation stems less from Dayton’s constraints than from the EU’s inability to offer a credible path forward – leaving reforms stalled and enlargement promises uncertain.
In 1995, the international community was desperate to end a war in the heart of Europe that had led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. The peace agreement, reached after weeks of painstaking diplomacy at a US Air Force base in rural Ohio, officially ended the war on 21 November that year.
However, Dayton was intended only as a stopgap measure to end the fighting. It successfully ended the war, restored territorial integrity, and allowed refugees to return.
The agreement also created a structure that locks power into ethnic blocks, making constitutional change almost impossible and rewarding political elites who profit from permanent division.
For many in Brussels, the question is no longer whether Dayton was necessary, but whether the EU has become a guarantor of a system that cannot reform.
Three presidents to rule them all
The agreement, negotiated chiefly by the United States and backed by the EU, created a complex constitutional structure.
Bosnia and Herzegovina officially has two entities, the Bosniak–Croat Federation, governed by the country’s Muslim Bosniak and Croatian populations, and Republika Srpska, ruled by the country’s Serbs.
The peace agreement also established a tripartite presidency with one Bosniak, one Serb, and one Croat member, a move that excluded any other ethnic minorities from holding the top job.
Bosnia also remains the only country in Europe whose domestic politics are overseen by an international authority. The High Representative, appointed by the Peace Implementation Council, has sweeping powers to dismiss officials and impose laws. Today, the role is held by Christian Schmidt, a former German agriculture minister.
Several years ago, Schmidt received criticism for changing electoral laws while voters were still at the polls, a move that highlighted the undemocratic nature of excessive international involvement.
EU enlargement without momentum
Bosnia is formally an EU candidate state. However, in practice, its candidacy is stalled.
The European Commission’s latest enlargement report ranked Bosnia among the weakest performers in the region in domains such as governance, legislative output, rule of law, and civil society space – also signaling lagging progress in judicial, administrative, and anti-corruption reforms.
Financially, Bosnia receives significant EU support: €309 million through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance in 2024; €1.104 billion in World Bank Investment Fund grants since 2009; and an indicative €976.6 million through the EU Growth Plan.
Yet the latter allocation was cut by 10% because Bosnia failed to submit its Reform Agenda on time – a sign of a political system that cannot deliver even when funding depends on it.
The EU has tied Bosnia’s accession prospects to a long list of judicial, administrative, economic, and constitutional reforms. However, the political structure Dayton created has proven unable to implement change at scale, creating a permanent mismatch between EU expectations and Bosnia’s institutional capacity.
As the Commission concluded this year, “Without timely delivery on reforms, the formal opening of accession negotiations will be postponed.”
Security as a substitute for reform
Dayton’s defenders argue that critics forget what was achieved.
The war killed around 100,000 people and displaced millions. Nearly three decades later, Bosnia has avoided renewed conflict, and some believe that without Dayton’s infrastructure – the High Representative and an international military presence – instability would still be possible.
EUFOR – the European Union’s peacekeeping military mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina – today deploys around 1,500 troops in Bosnia, with reinforcements sent in 2025 due to tensions driven by Republika Srpska’s controversial leader, Milorad Dodik. Twenty-five EU and non-EU states contribute soldiers.
Tanja Topić of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Banja Luka argues that international security guarantees remain central to everyday life.
“Almost every year, citizens in Bosnia anxiously wonder whether there will be another war,” she said. “The EUFOR forces give them some faith and hope, because there are few domestic actors in whom they trust.”
But this reliance on external supervision has also become a political ceiling. If the international community guarantees security and the EU does not demand structural reform as a condition for accession, the incentive to transform the institutions created in 1995 remains weak.
Dodik and the politics of paralysis
Milorad Dodik, a pro-Russian, Serbian nationalist and former leader of Republika Srpska, frequently exploits this deadlock, threatening secession for the Serb-majority region while leveraging the system’s protections to avoid change.
His confrontation with High Representative Schmidt escalated into criminal proceedings this year, when he was convicted for refusing to implement one of Schmidt’s decisions. Dodik was removed from the presidency and banned from office for six years as a result of the conviction. But he remains highly influential in Republika Srpska.
In a surprise move last month, the US also lifted sanctions on Dodik and his inner circle, offering little explanation.
Topić noted that the RS leader had publicly aligned himself with US President Donald Trump, and there are “suspicions” – though unconfirmed – that concessions involving Republika Srpska’s natural resources may have been offered in exchange for sanctions relief.
Marko Prelec, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, argued that Bosnia’s fragmentation is now less about Dayton itself than about the geopolitical environment surrounding it. Republika Srpska tends to have closer ties to Belgrade and Moscow, while the rest of the country leans more toward the West.
“The best defence against secession is the resilience of BiH and geopolitics,” Prelec said. “No one is keen to see Bosnia break up or recognise an independent Republika Srpska.”
The question for Europe
After 30 years, the EU has not yet built a credible strategy to move Bosnia from peacekeeping to nation-building.
The agreement delivered far more than anyone expected in 1995: territorial integrity, reconstruction, and decades without war.
But without an EU enlargement policy capable of unlocking institutional change, Bosnia risks being trapped indefinitely in a system designed to end the past rather than build the future.
The real question in 2025 is no longer whether Dayton failed – but whether Europe can finish what Dayton began.
(cs, cm)