Bosnia and Herzegovina

On 26 February 2025 the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) sentenced Milorad Dodik, then President of Republika Srpska (RS), to one year in prison and barred him from serving as RS President for six years for failing to comply with decisions of the High Representative. The verdict was upheld on 1 August 2025, and the Central Election Commission (CIK) revoked his mandate on 6 August. On 12 August the Court converted the prison sentence into a fine. Siniša Karan of Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) won the early RS presidential election after a partial repeat vote on 8 February 2026; ODIHR found that the undue advantages enjoyed by the ruling party left contestants with unequal opportunities. The United States removed Dodik from its sanctions list on 29 October 2025.

Christian Schmidt announced his resignation as High Representative on 11 May 2026, and Louis J. Crishock has led the Office of the High Representative in an acting capacity since 1 July. In the general elections of 4 October 2026, preliminary results gave the three Presidency seats to Denis Bećirović, Darijana Filipović and Željka Cvijanović, and the RS presidency to Savo Minić of SNSD, on a record-low turnout of approximately 42 per cent. ODIHR found that there was genuine competition, in a political landscape it described as deeply fragmented.

The Council of Ministers adopted the Reform Agenda under the European Union’s Growth Plan on 30 September 2025, after the Commission had cut EUR 108.5 million for delays, and the Commission approved it on 4 December 2025. The first intergovernmental accession conference had not been held by October 2026.

Reporters Without Borders ranks BiH 90th of 180 in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index with a score of 54.29, against 86th and 56.33 in 2025, and states that public-interest journalism in RS is challenged by the recriminalisation of defamation and the rising influence of Russian propaganda. The European Commission’s 2025 report on BiH found deep stagnation in media freedom, with worrying signs of deterioration. It states that political pressure, verbal attacks, intimidation and threats against journalists continued, including by high-level politicians, that the Communications Regulatory Agency (CRA) still lacks political and financial independence, and that only initial steps were taken towards legislation on transparency in media ownership and public advertising.

Since RS recriminalised defamation in 2023, prosecutors received 273 criminal complaints for defamation and disclosure of personal or family circumstances by the end of 2025, including 74 in 2025. Of the total, 47 concerned media outlets or media workers; no indictments against journalists or media organisations were filed in 2025. The RS law targeting civil society groups as “foreign agents”, adopted in February 2025, was struck down by the Constitutional Court in May 2025.

SafeJournalists recorded 35 cases of attacks and threats against journalists and media in 2025, at least 16 of them by politicians and public officials. In its preliminary findings on the 2026 general elections, ODIHR described the media environment as pluralistic but divided along ethnic and political lines, and found that the CRA did not conduct systematic media monitoring of the campaign, despite legal requirements.

State Media Monitor maps two entries in BiH, both classified State-Controlled (SC) in every review cycle since 2022: the PSB System of BiH, at the system level, and the news agency FENA.

The public broadcasting system comprises the state-level BHRT and the entity broadcasters RTVFBiH and RTRS; the Corporation that the 2005 law established to run the system jointly was never set up. RTRS stopped transferring BHRT’s share of the licence fee collected in RS in 2017, and BHRT put the resulting debt at KM 104.1 million (EUR 53.2 million) at the end of 2025. BHRT’s account was blocked for more than a month until 25 September 2026. In its 2026 election findings, ODIHR reported that RTRS allotted 43 per cent of its news coverage to entity authorities and another 30 per cent to SNSD, with an almost exclusively positive or neutral tone, while the Office of the High Representative states that BHRT, unlike its entity counterparts, had maintained a certain degree of political independence.

FENA is a public institution of the Federation, whose Government appoints its Management Board and consents to the appointment of its director. Elvir Hadžiahmetović, director since February 2025, was reported to have been chosen from the quota of Narod i pravda (NiP), a Federation coalition party, and in September 2026 to have handed out NiP promotional material during the election campaign.

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