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After Dodik’s Historic Removal, Bosnia’s Sovereignty Crisis Still Smolders
The Big Picture: Bosnia’s state authorities made history by unseating Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik, using domestic rule of law to topple an entity president for the first time. However, the constitutional fight continues.
On Aug. 6, the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Central Election Commission (CEC) revoked Milorad Dodik’s mandate as the president of Republika Srpska (RS). The Commission’s decision marks the first time since the 1995 Dayton Accords that an elected Serb entity leader has been removed from office by state authorities.
Under BiH’s Election Law, any official sentenced to more than six months in prison is automatically disqualified from holding office. The trigger for this decision was last week’s appellate ruling that upheld Dodik’s 1-year jail sentence and six-year political ban for refusing to implement decisions of Bosnia’s High Representative, Christian Schmidt.
Key Insight: Dodik’s removal lays bare Bosnia’s concentric sovereignty where the High Representative, the state judiciary, and the CEC converge to overrule entity-level obstruction and enforce compliance with the Dayton order.
Dodik’s removal from office illustrates BiH’s layered sovereignty. The original offense, wherein Dodik ordered the RS Official Gazette to ignore Schmidt’s decrees, violated Article 203a of Bosnia’s Criminal Code, which criminalizes failure to implement the decisions of the High Representative. The state-level Court convicted Dodik in February 2025, and its Appeals Chamber confirmed the verdict on Aug. 1, converting the sentence to a fine but retaining the six-year political ban.
That confirmation activated Article 1.10 of the Election Law, obliging the CEC to strip Dodik of office and schedule a new RS presidential poll within 90 days. The swift sequencing underscores how Dayton’s hybrid architecture allows judicial, electoral, and international levers to reinforce one another when domestic veto players block compliance.
Key Insight: Dodik’s defiance, echoed by Serbia, Hungary, and Russia, reveals an illiberal axis wielding sovereignty rhetoric to undercut EU authority in BiH.
Although the RS entity may proceed with calling snap elections, Dodik has denounced the court’s decision as politically driven and refused to accept it, declaring he would hold an entity-wide referendum to decide on his political fate.
In Banja Luka, the RS National Assembly (NSRS) majority has already repudiated the decision. The Alliance of Independent Social Democrats caucus chief, Srdjan Mazalica, called the ruling an encroachment on the exclusive jurisdiction of the NSRS,signaling that the Assembly will treat the CEC decision as null on RS territory. This posture further signals a potential institutional stand-off and is reminiscent of the Assembly’s 2023 law declaring Constitutional Court rulings non-applicable in the entity.
Belgrade reacted with overt support: President Aleksandar Vučić insisted that Serbia does not recognize the verdict while calling for a “peaceful, rational, and non-escalatory response.” Predictably, Budapest and Moscow quickly fell in step with Belgrade. The Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, denounced the decision as “Brussels diktat” while commending Dodik for opposing the “globalist agenda of EU-appointed overseers.” Moscow branded Dodik’s verdict as “illegal criminal prosecution,” warning that the ruling puts Bosnia’s unity at stake.
The reflexive solidarity among Belgrade, Budapest, and Moscow illustrates how illiberal actors weaponize sovereignty rhetoric to erode Brussels’ normative leverage, recasting Bosnia as a proxy battleground in a wider contest over the future political order of Europe.
Key Insight: The risk calculus shifts from judicial finale to political containment: can state institutions enforce the ban without triggering parallel RS structures?
For Bosniak and Croat parties, the CEC decision is a long-awaited assertion of state authority, while for Dodik and his supporters, it is proof that BiH remains a “protectorate run by foreign judges.”
By displacing an elected figure through extra-entity mechanisms, Sarajevo may have solved an immediate constitutional crisis while deepening the narrative of external domination that fuels Serb separatism. Dodik’s removal does not automatically neutralize RS secessionism. Instead, it extends the contest onto two fronts.
Domestically, Dodik and his defense counsel filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court to suspend the decision that led to his removal. The battle thus continues in the same arena: the Constitutional Court, whose gears still turn – but grind.
Even after RS stopped nominating its two seats in 2022, the Court still has seven active judges so it can legally decide cases. This boycott thus does not make the Court inoperable, but it clogs its machinery and feeds a narrative that any decision taken without Serb judges lacks consent. The RS’s two vacant seats mean every case must be heard in plenary, swelling a docket already bloated by more than 6,000 unresolved files and extending average decision times beyond four years. Dodik’s wager, therefore, is not outright annulment but attrition: each procedural motion, recusal request or interim-measure plea feeds a narrative that decisions rendered without Serb judges lack legitimacy, buying political time for his referendum gambit and for allies abroad to harden the “show trial” frame.
Internationally, Budapest’s overt support signals readiness to block any fresh EU sanctions – an easy veto in the Council’s unanimity rule – while Moscow’s denunciation of the verdict supplies rhetorical cover for Orbán’s stance.
Here, the procedural drag is a strategic asset as it allows Dodik to keep domestic institutions in limbo and external partners aligned until the political costs of enforcing the ban outweigh its legal certainty.
What to Watch Next
Three flashpoints will determine whether Dodik’s removal sticks. First, security obstructions. Dodik vowed to “deploy the police to prevent any polling stations from being set up” if snap elections proceed, signaling that the RS interior ministry could physically block the CEC logistics.
Second, financial conditionality: Brussels could suspend or reprogram the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance money by qualified-majority vote—exactly as it halted Kosovo’s entire €91 million 2022 package—so the real test is whether member states translate “tough talk” into cuts that bite the RS budget.
Third, the Bonn Powers “wildcard”: Since 1997, the Office of the High Representative has removed over a hundred officials and could invoke the same authority to appoint an interim RS president if the post stays vacant, restoring formal hierarchy but reinforcing allegations of “protectorate rule,” and risking a more serious constitutional crisis.
Therefore, historic as it is, Dodik’s removal is not a closure but an ignition. The sovereignty crisis still smolders, and the real test now is enforcement without a wider constitutional clash.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not an official policy or position of New Lines Institute.