The Limits of European Union Conditionality in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Judicial Reform and Institutional Vetoes

Why has European Union conditionality failed to produce effective judicial reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina? This paper examines the limits of the EU’s external influence in contexts of deep institutional fragmentation by focusing on the repeated failure to reform the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC), a reform repeatedly demanded by the European Commission under Chapter 23 of the accession process. Drawing on theories of Europeanisation and EU conditionality, the paper argues that the distant and uncertain accession perspective, combined with the absence of credible sanctioning mechanisms, significantly weakens the EU’s incentive-based leverage. These external constraints are compounded by internal political dynamics, which are analysed through the lenses of veto player theory and state capture. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s institutional architecture, characterised by a proliferation of actors endowed with veto powers at multiple levels (entities, cantons, ethnonational parties, and a collective presidency), enables political elites to block judicial reforms in order to preserve partisan and personal interests, particularly regarding political control and corruption. Methodologically, the paper relies on a qualitative case study combining document analysis of EU and international institutional reports with academic literature, as well as semi-structured interviews with Bosnian and EU institutional actors. The reform of the HJPC serves as the central empirical case, illustrating the causal link between institutional fragmentation and the neutralisation of EU conditionality. The paper contributes to the literature on EU enlargement and conditionality by bridging Europeanisation theory and veto player theory to better explain the domestic mechanisms that constrain the effectiveness of EU external governance. Empirically, it offers an in-depth analysis of a concrete case of institutional deadlock and its implications for the promotion of the rule of law. More broadly, the findings provide policy-relevant insights for the design of EU strategies aimed at supporting judicial reform in post-conflict candidate countries, particularly in the Western Balkans.