On Thursday, the High Representative met with representatives of World Bank directors from the Group of Eight countries and the Netherlands, which represents BiH on the World Bank and IMF Boards. He also held a separate meeting with Mike Deppler, the Director of the IMF’s European Department.

The High Representative briefed the World Bank country representatives on the status of economic reform in BiH. In light of the decreasing donor funds for BiH the country representatives underlined the critical necessity that the BiH authorities assume real ownership of the economic reform program and take, on their own initiative, the sort of hard but necessary decisions which will allow reform to take root and deliver long-term benefits to ordinary citizens. They noted that a real partnership between the domestic authorities and the International Community brings with it the obligation to fulfill commitments, and that the World Bank's country assistance program for BiH is designed to reach this objective. In this regard, the refusal on the part of the RS delegates to pass state-level economic legislation was noted with great concern.