Speeches

Last week, my wife Jane and I spent a night with a displaced Bosnian family in their home near Visegrad.
It’s a breathtakingly beautiful spot, high in the mountains, with the Drina river tumbling through the valley a couple of thousand feet below.
Together with our hosts for the night – the Setkic family - we sat sipping tea, watching [...]

Let me begin by thanking the UNDP and our friend Moises (Venancio- UNDP Resident Representative) for organising this event. The UNDP has formidable experience in governance reform. You see it done best – and worst, all over the world.
Here in BiH, you are certainly approaching the subject of governance reform from the right perspective – fr [...]

The connection between economic theory and practice is a crucial issue, at the heart of the present effort to create a self-sustaining market democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The good news is that today the proportion of good ideas being transformed into sound and useful legislation is increasing substantially. This is because government [...]

A year ago today, I had the honour and privilege of taking up the position of High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
We’ve achieved a lot in the last year; but there’s a great deal more to do.
I said, when I began this job, that my priorities would be justice and jobs.

We are here today to inaugurate a BiH project that is a positive model of how companies in this country can expand successfully – and create new jobs and raise living standards.
This information pillar is a small steel computer platform with dedicated software – but it is much much more than the sum of its parts.
For one thing, it rep [...]

First of all, allow me to commend Prime Minister Mikerevic on his lucid and authoritative presentation this morning. The Prime Minister has spoken about measures that are necessary in order to stimulate investment. It will fall to the Prime Minister and his government to implement these measures - his working day is dominated by the challenge of pu [...]

I would like to begin, as always, by extending my thanks to you for inviting me to attend your session today.
We have had a turbulent few months so it is important that I should come here personally to hear your views and give you mine.
I come here at an opportune moment. We have completed the first phase of our journey, and are ab [...]

Thank you for inviting me to the official launch of the “Trans-Adriatic Conference – Interreg IIIA”. Thank you, especially, to Italy and to Foreign Minister Frattini for the strong support you have given to this initiative: and thank you, and congratulations, to BiH, and to Minister Ivanic, for hosting the first conference.
The extension to [...]

I am delighted to be here at this ceremony, delighted to be able to mark in this way the first few month’s of EUPM’s mission.
It scarcely seems four months since EUPM took over where the UN IPTF left off.
You have already become such a familiar part of the BiH scene that one sometimes forgets that the mission is still relatively new. [...]

My message to the businesspeople in the audience is – more or less – that I have no message.
Running companies is something you know how to do – and successful companies are the dynamo of successful economies. Public officials do not make economies prosper; businesspeople do. You do not need me or any other public official – BiH or internati [...]