The Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Croatian: Hrvatska demokratska zajednica Bosne i Hercegovine, abbr. HDZ BiH) is a Christian democratic Croatian nationalist political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, representing the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is an observer member of the European People's Party. Its headquarters is in Mostar.
The party was founded on 18 August 1990, with the first party convention held in Sarajevo. It has participated in all multiparty elections held in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1991. It regularly won the support of the Croat electorate up to 2000 and took part in forming the government. It returned to power in 2002, where it remained until 2010. Since 2014, the party has once again been in power.
In the October 2002 general election, the party was part of the "Croatian Coalition" (Hrvatska koalicija) which won 9.5% of the popular vote and five out of 42 seats in the national House of Representatives and 16 of the 98 seats in the Federal House of Representatives.
In 2006, the party joined the Croatian National Assembly, an alliance of Bosnian Croat political parties, along with the Croatian Party of Rights of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croat People's Union.
Throughout its history, the HDZ BiH has had nine presidents, the current one being Dragan Čović since 5 June 2005.[5] Four of the six Croat members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina have come from the party, the most recent one also being Čović, serving in office from 2014 until 2018.[5]
In the 2018 general election, the party was in a coalition with three other Bosnian Croat parties (Croatian Peasant Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatian Party of Rights of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatian Christian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina), winning 149,872 or 9.05% of the votes, five out of 42 seats in the national House of Representatives and 16 out of 98 in the Federal one.[6]
