Bosnia and Herzegovina's path to Europe:

The European Union (EU) has a developed, complex concept of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It makes strict demands on member states but is equally demanding of candidate countries, requiring a high degree of approximation to the CAP-related acquis communautaire. The Constitution of BiH is, however, a complex, internationally-agreed document which distributes de-centralized policy-making powers in a way that does not easily satisfy the EU's requirements for single state-level control of implementation of the acquis communautaire. This is particularly the case for rural and agricultural policy. The EU in December 2015 noted: "in the field of agricultural and rural development BiH still needs to establish a multi-annual rural development strategy, action plan, multi-annual budgets as well as the national structures for pre-accession assistance to the agricultural sector through IPARD". To create the preconditions for the successful conduct of this process, BiH still needs to carry out comprehensive reforms of legal and institutional frameworks to enable the agriculture and rural development sectors in the country to respond to EU requirements.