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More than 30 years after Dayton, the European Union and the international community still keep Bosnia and Herzegovina under the military umbrella of EUFOR and the political tutelage of the High Representative. The exercise “Quick Response 2026” – hundreds of reservists, French armored vehicles, Romanian, Austrian and Italian forces arriving by plane, train, truck and ship – is not just routine training. It is a clear signal: an external power can rapidly multiply its presence and prevent any deviation from the existing order.
And this is precisely where the fundamental question that has been suppressed in BiH for years lies: What is the purpose of a state that, three decades after the war, remains under international protectorate and European military protection if part of the local peoples – Serbs and Croats – want independence, a third entity, or at least the right to decide for themselves where and how they will live?
A protectorate that refuses to call itself by its name
The Dayton Agreement stopped the war, but it created a structure in which sovereignty is incomplete. The High Representative can still impose laws and remove elected officials. EUFOR has an executive mandate to maintain a “safe and secure environment” – which in practice means protecting the territorial integrity of a state that part of its citizens experience as imposed. Local governments exist, elections are held, but key decisions about the constitutional order remain outside the control of the local peoples.
When Serb and Croat elites speak of greater autonomy, a third entity, or even peaceful separation, the international community treats it as a threat to peace. Military exercises like this one send the message: “We can arrive quickly and prevent it.” This is not a classic occupation in the sense of annexation and direct administration. But if an external power permanently holds military force to stop peoples from freely deciding their political status – then the line between protectorate and occupation becomes blurred. Many Serbs and Croats experience it exactly that way: they live in a state they did not choose and from which they are not allowed to leave.
Democracy according to Brussels’ measure
The European Union constantly talks about democracy, the rule of law and European values. At the same time, in BiH it maintains a system in which Serbs and Croats are denied the right to decide whether they want to live in a common state with Bosniaks. Instead, they are forced to remain within the Dayton framework – with ethnic quotas, vetoes and blockages – because any serious reconsideration of borders or entities would be declared destabilization.
If democracy means that a people decides about itself, then democracy here is selective. It is permitted only within predetermined boundaries that protect “multiethnicity” and territorial integrity. The right to self-determination, which is at least theoretically recognized elsewhere in Europe, is treated here as a danger. The EU thus simultaneously promotes democracy and prevents it from being fully applied to two of the three constituent peoples.
A conclusion that is hard to avoid
As long as BiH remains under international military and political tutelage, and as long as Serbs and Croats have no real possibility to decide their status through peaceful means, the question “Is this an occupation?” is not merely rhetorical. Formally – it is not. Functionally – the state exists more because of external force than because of internal consensus. The “Quick Response 2026” exercise is only the latest proof that this force still exists and is ready to be used.
In such a situation, the story about European democracy sounds hollow. Because a democracy that grants one people the right to live as it wishes, while keeping the other two together by the force of an international mandate – is not democracy in the full sense of the word. It is conflict management. And conflict management, after more than 30 years, looks less and less like a temporary solution and more and more like a permanent condition.
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