Bosnia will officially apply in January to join the European Union in January, encouraged by the bloc's positive assessment of its reform progress, various media houses report.

New Europe says if its application is accepted, years of tough negotiations lie ahead and many observers believe Bosnia, politically decentralized along ethnic lines and economically impoverished, is unlikely to join before 2025. Bosnia has struggled hard to overcome ethnic divisions that linger 20 years after the end of a war in which some 100,000 people died.

In June this year, Bosnian Serb leaders refused to sign a reform agenda demanded by the European Union as part of a drive to speed up Bosnia’s joining the bloc. A big chunk of the reforms demanded by the EU relate to economic and financial issues.

Reuters says Bosnia signed a pre-membership pact on closer ties known as a Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) back in 2008, but after years of delayed reforms it was only ratified in June this year when Germany and Britain launched a new initiative to encourage economic development.

“The ex-Yugoslav republic lags behind its neighbors on the road to joining the EU. It has struggled to overcome ethnic divisions that linger 20 years after the end of a war in which some 100,000 people died.”

"I would say that, after the signing of the SAA, this is a new historic date for Bosnia," Dragan Covic, the Croat presidency chairman, told reporters.

Under Bosnia's complex postwar political arrangements, representatives of the country's Bosniak, Croatian and Serbian communities serve together as head of state and take turns to act as chairman.
Under its new strategy for Bosnia, the EU asked the leaders of the ethnically divided country to agree a reform agenda and a timetable for its implementation, a task Bosnia has since completed.

But other conditions have remained pending, such as the creation of an effective decision-making mechanism when dealing with the EU, and the adjustment of a trade agreement with the terms of the SAA.

The European Commission has said the bloc will support Bosnia's reforms with 1 billion euros ($1.08 billion) over the next three years, and a further 500 million euros for investment in infrastructure.

The EU now has 28 member states, including the former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia. EU candidate countries include Turkey, Albania and three other ex-Yugoslav republics - Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.