Mostar is famous for its Old Bridge, but also, sadly, for ethnic divisions and a dysfunctional government that hasn’t held elections for 12 years. Now is the time for Mostar to stand up and show that something can be changed. With local elections scheduled for 20 December 2020, one of the 14 priorities for the country’s application for European Union (EU) membership has finally been satisfied. Mostar is a unique city. The conflict from 1992-1995 continues to affect different parts of life there. Administratively speaking, the city has been divided into two autonomous parts – East and West, Croat and Bosniak. Interaction between the two parts is almost nonexistent, apart from semi-integrated schools which still experience a kind of ethnic segregation. History classes in schools are such that each ethnic group is given different “facts” about the war. The division is also clear in the city’s two electricity companies, two phone networks, two postal services, two utility services, and two universities. Mostar was one of the most ethnically integrated cities in the former Yugoslavia until the war. But extreme nationalism managed to destroy and divide the city. The division of the city was considered a victory for nationalists, and culminated in the destruction of the Old Bridge, which was, and is now after its reconstruction in 2004, the symbol of Mostar. The dividing line today is similar to the front line during the war. Mostar is the only municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in which local elections have not been held since 2008. In 2010, Bosnia’s Constitutional Court declared the city’s electoral statute unconstitutional. The reason for this decision was inconsistencies in the Election Act of 2001. The Constitutional Court gave the relevant authorities six months to harmonize the inconsistent provisions. However, the judgement has still not been implemented. As a consequence, in 2012 the Constitutional Court adopted a ruling on the non-implementation which essentially invalidated those provisions of the Act. Since then, it has been impossible to agree upon the adoption of a new law. In the meantime, Mostar has been run by an acting mayor from the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), whose administration did not have a democratic mandate. Martin Bago, director of NGO Futura and head of the NGO Network “Our Society,” told Euronews that the lack of a city council has left the mayor’s office unchecked, allowing it to do as it pleases. In October 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Bosnia and Herzegovina to amend legislation and allow elections in Mostar. Irma Baralija, president of the Mostar branch of Naša Stranka, sued the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina because it was impossible for her, a politician living in Mostar, to vote or run for office. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in her favor, finding that the failure of Bosnian authorities to enforce the Bosnian Constitutional Court’s 2010 ruling has created a legal catastrophe. Numerous problems in Mostar’s electoral system have stalled change. There are six electoral constituencies in Mostar which elect the same number of representatives to the city council. This is based on the pre-war 1991 census, despite the division of the city and other demographic changes since then. In addition, there are power-sharing mechanisms like ethnic parity and the indirect election of the mayor. All of this has made vetoes and political stalemates the norm. For years, the two major parties, HDZ and the Bosniak-led Party of Democratic Action (SDA), have not been able to agree on reforming the necessary provisions. SDA has lobbied to divide the city into several voting municipalities, while HDZ has stood for the principle “one man, one vote,” relying on the fact that Mostar now has a Croat majority. The Council of Europe and the EU have put local elections in Mostar and improvements to the electoral system in its conditionality program for BiH’s EU membership. In the European Commission’s 2019 Opinion on BiH’s membership application, the EU listed 14 key priorities. The first was ensuring elections were conducted in line with European standards. Therefore, elections in Mostar are crucial for BiH’s path to the EU. This was also made clear in a joint statement by the EU’s High Representative and Vice-President, Josep Borrell, and the Neighborhood and Enlargement Commissioner, Olivér Várhelyi. The Council of Europe has long been aware of the situation in Mostar. The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities decided, during its session in October 2017, to establish a Reflection Group on Mostar. The group sought sustainable solutions for restoring local democracy in the city and visited it a number of times.