The President of the Republic is not ceremonial.

If the president had been intended as a ceremonial figure, the Constitution would have given him ceremonial functions. Instead, it has defined him as the head of state, representative of the unity of the people, legitimate representative of the Republic at home and abroad, guarantor of the constitutional functioning of the institutions, and has given him a range of direct constitutional powers. Therefore, the question is not whether the president of the Republic of Kosovo is ceremonial. He is not. The question is who will be president and how will he exercise the powers that the Constitution has given him.

In the political and institutional life of Kosovo, the belief has been created for years that the President of the Republic is a largely ceremonial institution. This has been repeated so often that over time it has been accepted almost as something self-evident. But this is not the case. It is enough to read the Constitution to understand that the President of the Republic of Kosovo is not a ceremonial president. He has not been so even when he has appeared to be so.

The Constitution has not changed the powers of the president depending on the person who has exercised this function. What has changed is the way in which different presidents have understood and exercised their powers. It is precisely here that the explanation for the importance that the issue of who will be the next President of the Republic has acquired today must be sought.

From a president elected by the people to a president elected by the Assembly

The political history of the institution of the president in Kosovo is older than the independent state.
In the early 90s, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the violent suppression of Kosovo's autonomy by the Milošević regime, the Albanians of Kosovo established their own political institutions. In the elections held at that time, Ibrahim Rugova was elected President of the Republic of Kosovo with broad popular support. He was the President of a republic that did not enjoy international recognition, in an occupied and repressed country, but that expressed the political will of the overwhelming majority of the people of Kosovo. 

After 1999, circumstances changed. Kosovo was placed under international administration. The Constitutional Framework for Provisional Self-Government established the central institutions of self-government, including the Assembly, the President, and the Government. The President was now elected by the Assembly. Ibrahim Rugova was elected President twice, and after his death, Fatmir Sejdiu was elected. 

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With the declaration of independence on 17 February 2008 and the entry into force of the Constitution on 15 June of that year, the institution of the President received its full state and constitutional basis. Fatmir Sejdiu continued his mandate, while the Assembly subsequently elected Behgjet Pacolli, Atifete Jahjaga, Hashim Thaçi and Vjosa Osmani. It was during this period that a misconception about the nature of this institution began to emerge.

How did the idea of ​​a ceremonial president come about?  

The resignation of Fatmir Sejdiu following the Constitutional Court Judgment of 2010 and the developments that followed created an unusual period for the institution of the presidency. In 2011, Behgjet Pacolli was elected president, but his election procedure was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. After the political crisis that followed, Atifete Jahjaga was elected president. 

In the political and public discourse of that time, the characterization of the president as a “ceremonial” figure began to be used more and more. The relatively restrained manner in which the function was exercised during President Jahjaga’s mandate also contributed to this perception being further strengthened. Herein lies the misunderstanding. 
The fact that a president chooses to exercise his powers with restraint does not mean that the Constitution has granted them to him only for ceremonial purposes. Just as the fact that another president exercises them more actively does not mean that his powers have been increased. 

Constitutional competence exists regardless of the personality, political experience, or manner of action of the person exercising it. 

This became much more evident with the election of Hashim Thaçi as president in 2016. He came to the Presidency after a long political experience, as party leader, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and one of the main figures in Kosovo’s political life. The more active exercise of presidential powers caused the perception of the “ceremonial” president to gradually lose its meaning. The Constitution had not changed. The president had changed.

What does the Constitution say?

The answer to the position of the president should not be sought in political perceptions, but in the Constitution.
Article 4 defines one of the fundamental principles of the constitutional order of Kosovo: the separation of powers and checks and balances between them. Within this definition, paragraph 3 of the same article places the president in a special position: he represents the unity of the people, is the legitimate representative of the country at home and abroad, and guarantor of the democratic functioning of the institutions of the Republic of Kosovo.

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Article 83 is even more direct: the president is the head of state and represents the unity of the people of the Republic of Kosovo. These two definitions alone should be enough to seriously question the “ceremonial” qualification. But Article 84 goes much further. The president represents the Republic internally and externally; guarantees the constitutional functioning of the institutions; announces elections; issues decrees; promulgates laws and has the right to return them for review; signs international agreements in cases specified by the Constitution; may propose constitutional amendments; may refer matters to the Constitutional Court; leads foreign policy; is the Supreme Commander of the Security Force; appoints the mandate holder for the formation of the Government and exercises important powers in the appointment of judges, prosecutors, the Chief State Prosecutor, diplomatic representatives and heads of other constitutional institutions. These are not ceremonial powers. In fact, the Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo does not assign any ceremonial powers to the president of the Republic. The powers it recognizes are constitutional powers with concrete content and consequences in the functioning of the state and its institutions. An institution with such powers may have a politically restrained president. It may have a more active or less active president. But this is a matter of the manner in which the function is exercised and not of the position that the Constitution has given it.

Political competence and personality  

Comparative constitutional theory also teaches us that the power of a president is not measured solely by the way in which he is elected. Matthew Shugart and John Carey, in their well-known study Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics, analyze presidential power precisely by starting from the powers that the constitution recognizes for the president. Robert Elgie, in his studies of European systems, has also shown that presidents acting in similar constitutional circumstances can have very different political weight.

This leads us to a fundamental difference: between the constitutional position of the president and the manner of exercising powers. The first is determined by the Constitution. The second is strongly influenced by the person elected president. This has also been proven by the mandate of Vjosa Osmani. Especially during the last part of the mandate, differences with the Prime Minister on certain state issues have made the constitutional independence of the institution of the president more visible. This should not in itself be seen as a deviation from the system. The check and balance of powers exist precisely because the Constitution has not concentrated all state authority in one institution. Three cases clearly demonstrate this. The annual address of the president to the Assembly at the end of 2024 was not just a protocol appearance. The president expressed positions on important state issues in her capacity as head of state. Participation in the Peace Board made another dimension visible: the representation of the Republic abroad. The president acted on behalf of the Republic, while the issue of ratification was left to the Assembly according to the constitutional order. It is here that the separation and balance is seen: the president represents the state, while the Assembly exercises the competence that the Constitution reserves to him. The case of the Chief State Prosecutor is even more significant. For a long period, the president did not decree the proposed candidate. It is possible to discuss whether such a position was legally correct or not. This is another debate. For the issue I am addressing here, something else is important: a decision by the president was able to produce direct consequences in the functioning of an important institution of the justice system. A purely ceremonial function does not produce such consequences. Constitutional competence does.

Why does it matter who will be president?

Therefore, the debate over the next president of the Republic should not be reduced to the question of who will occupy a ceremonial position. It is exactly the opposite.

The political importance of the election of the president stems from the constitutional importance of the institution. The president is elected by the Assembly, but after the election he is not a representative of the parliamentary majority that voted for him. The Constitution establishes this political relationship: the president is the head of state and the representative of the unity of the people. This is precisely why it matters who becomes president.
A president with political experience, constitutional knowledge, public authority and the will to fully exercise his powers can make the weight of the Presidency very visible. A president who chooses restraint can make the same institution seem much less powerful. But this does not change the Constitution. And it is precisely here that we must seek part of the explanation why the issue of the president can become the source of a new political and institutional crisis. Not because the Constitution has not defined the position of the president. Nor because it is a ceremonial function. On the contrary, because political parties know that the president has important constitutional powers and that the way in which they will be exercised depends greatly on the person who will hold this function. 

In the end, if the president had been intended as a ceremonial figure, the Constitution would have given him ceremonial functions. Instead, it has defined him as the head of state, representative of the unity of the people, legitimate representative of the Republic at home and abroad, guarantor of the constitutional functioning of the institutions, and has given him a series of direct constitutional powers. Therefore, the question is not whether the president of the Republic of Kosovo is ceremonial. He is not. The question is who will be president and how he will exercise the powers that the Constitution has given him.

(The author is a professor of the theory of the state and law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pristina).