“Europe starts in Sarajevo”

To spotlight Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1994 European Parliament elections in France, intellectuals and representatives of citizens groups created their own list for these elections. The initiative was called “Europe starts in Sarajevo”, and it attracted significant media attention, especially due to the presence of prominent intellectuals and vocal supporters of BiH like Bernard-Henri Lévy and André Glucksmann. The list’s promoters asked for “radical change” to French and European diplomacy in order to end the war. But they had different ideas about the list: some felt that the aim was not necessarily to get into parliament, but to put pressure on the traditional parties. When the Socialist list led by Michel Rocard came out in favour of lifting the arms embargo, Lévy and some of his colleagues announced a few days before the election that the list had become obsolete and that they would withdraw it. The majority of the other candidates disagreed and decided to keep the list. This situation created significant confusion. The “Europe begins in Sarajevo” list, which had originally been predicted to get up to 12% of the vote, received 305,633 votes on election day, representing 1.57% of the total vote in France, and thus failed to enter the European Parliament.

The campaign in France inspired a similar initiative in Sweden, called “Sarajevolistan”.