University of Sarajevo Open Lecture
“From ZAVNOBIH’s Decisions as the Basis of the Single BH Economic Space”

Upon the occasion of 25 November – National Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina – the open lecture took place in the UNSA Ceremonial Hall on Monday, 23 November 2015. The speaker was Prof. Dr. Zeljko Sain, of Sarajevo School of Business and Economics Dean. The topic of the lecture was “From ZAVNOBIH’s Decisions as the Basis of the Single BH Economic Space.”

UNSA Rector, Prof. Dr. Muharem Avdispahic, HonDSc opened the lecture saying that the University traditionally organized that event  to mark one of the most important dates in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina 25  November – National Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At the beginning of his lecture, Prof. Dr. Sain stressed that every person should live according to the Latin saying “Historia magistra vitae.”

He said that Bosnia and Herzegovina was countries long country with various state and political systems throughout its turbulent history. As the result of that course of the history, Bosnia and Herzegovina has several significant historical events, periods and dates.

“One specially significant date from the course of the 20th century are 25 – 26 November 1943 - the days when the session of the National Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ZAVNOBiH) took place in Mrkonjic Grad and its gradual transformation into the first true popular representation of three BH peoples Muslims, Serbs and Croats” said Dean Sain. He also added that, at the second ZAVNOBIH session, held in Sanski Most from 30 June to 02 July 1944, the supreme lawmaking and executive national representative body, the highest organ of state power of Bosnia and Herzegovina constituted.

In his presentation, Dean Sain noted that it is obvious that the ZAVNOBIH decisions, as well as in its other documents, directly and/or indirectly treated, in addition to the dominating political and military issues, and issues of the economy, its reconstruction, growth and development, financing, etc.

Emphasizing that all events in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including its neighborhood, imperatively require legal and legitimate rational designing, the regulation and realization of the renewed approach to the single economic space in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dean Sain said “Taking as the starting point all ZAVNOBiH decisions, then all constitutions in the former Yugoslavia and the BH Constitution within the former Yugoslavia, followed by the international recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s sovereignty in 1992 and its state organization under the DPA, the issue of a single economic space is not just a solely economic, but above all a political one. One must keep in mind that it is about the issue through which the internal state organization, positioning, is especially viewed through the prism of its competitiveness and the competitiveness of the region and the world.”

The Dayton Peace Accords, and the legal framework of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina established as a part of it, regulate the existence of the single economic space through the legal sovereignty of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its components: two entities, one district and ten Cantons in the Federation with their general, special and individual sovereignty, including the local government levels, Dean Sain pointed out that in a direct and indirect way, this complex state organization is further complicating the functioning of the single economic space in Bosnia and Herzegovina, practically manifested through either political or one-sided interpretation.


Dean Sain during his presentation noted that the national program of economic reforms in 2015, which was adopted in February this year, contains, among other things, official data for the previous year and projections for the current and the next three years. Dean Sain said that those positive achievements needed to be continuously increased quantitatively and qualitatively in order to generate the further prosperity of our country Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At the end, Dean Sain, on behalf of the University of Sarajevo, congratulated to all BH citizens the National Day, with a wish to mark each subsequent statehood anniversary with improved results