Kosovo’s Dissolution Case: Correcting the Result, Failing to Protect the Constitutional Text

Flamur Hyseni

Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Prishtina.

Kosovo’s most recent constitutional dispute arose from a familiar setting: political deadlock, presidential succession, and parliamentary dissolution as a response to institutional crisis. Against this background, the power to dissolve the Assembly is never merely technical. It determines whether political authority remains within the elected legislature or is returned to the electorate.

On 6 March 2026, the President issued Decree No. 24/2026 dissolving the Tenth Legislature of the Assembly. The decree rested on the view that the Assembly had failed to elect a new President within the thirty-day deadline set by Article 86(2) of the Constitution. On 25 March 2026, the Constitutional Court ruled that the decree had no legal effect. In terms of the outcome, the Court was right: the Assembly could not be dissolved solely because that deadline had expired.

Yet the Court’s reasoning remains problematic. By linking Article 86(2) to parliamentary dissolution, the Court transformed a procedural deadline into part of a sanctioning mechanism, although the Constitution regulates dissolution in other specific provisions. The case therefore raises a broader question: may the mandate of parliament be terminated as a downstream consequence of a temporal deadline, or only when the constitutional text clearly provides for such an outcome?

In this post, I argue that when courts convert procedural deadlines into implied grounds for dissolution, judicial interpretation risks shifting power away from the elected legislature and towards institutional actors managing crises through functional reasoning rather than clear textual authority.

A Decree and a Constitutional Dilemma

The President’s decree relied on Article 82(1)(3) and Article 86(2) of Kosovo’s 2008 Constitution. Its central justification was that the Assembly had failed to elect a new President no later than thirty days before the expiry of the incumbent President’s term. At first sight, this appeared to preserve institutional continuity. Yet continuity cannot be secured by bypassing the constitutional text. In a parliamentary republic, dissolution is an extraordinary constitutional act. It cannot arise from a functional assumption; it must rest on a clear constitutional basis.

The Constitutional Text

The Constitution contains two provisions central to the dispute. Article 86(2) provides that the election of the President must take place no later than thirty days before the expiry of the incumbent President’s term. This is a time-limit provision intended to prevent an institutional vacuum in the presidential office.

Article 86(2), however, does not state that failure to comply with this deadline automatically dissolves the Assembly. Dissolution is regulated elsewhere. Article 82(1)(3) provides that the Assembly shall be dissolved if the President is not elected within sixty days from the date on which the election procedure begins. Article 86(6) provides for dissolution if, even in the third round of voting, no candidate is elected President.

This distinction matters. The Constitution separates the deadline for action from the consequence of dissolution. A deadline may be mandatory, but a constitutional sanction must be express. Dissolving parliament ends the mandate of the representative institution and requires more than an inference from institutional convenience.

Why the Decree Was Premature

The decree of 6 March was premature because the sixty-day period from the beginning of the presidential election procedure had not expired. Nor had the three rounds of voting under Article 86(6) taken place. Therefore, neither express constitutional ground for dissolving the Assembly had been satisfied.

In constitutional law, especially when a representative mandate is at stake, powers cannot be implied but must clearly be conferred by the constitutional text.

Correcting the Result

The Constitutional Court was right to find that the decree had no legal effect. It thereby prevented a premature dissolution and preserved, in terms of outcome, the principle that a parliamentary mandate cannot be terminated without a clear constitutional basis. The Court’s operative ruling also gave the deputies thirty-four days to conduct and complete the presidential election procedure.

This is the strongest element of the judgment. The Court rejected the President’s use of Article 86(2) as a sufficient basis for dissolving the Assembly immediately after the thirty-day deadline had expired. But constitutional adjudication must be judged not only by the result it reaches; it must also be judged by the reasoning through which that result is reached.

Failing to Protect the Constitutional Text

The judgment did not stop at correcting the decree. The Court gave the Assembly an additional thirty-four days to complete the presidential election procedure and linked the expiry of that period to dissolution ex constitutione. This is where the problem begins.

Instead of simply stating that Article 82(1)(3) and Article 86(6) had not been satisfied, the Court constructed a new relationship between Article 86(2) and Article 82(1)(3). It saved the Assembly from a premature decree, but also reconstructed the constitutional scheme of deadlines in a way not clearly supported by the text.

The consequence is not merely doctrinal. It expands the Court’s role in the constitutional system. Instead of policing the boundary between constitutional text and institutional action, the Court becomes an actor capable of completing the constitutional design where the text is silent or incomplete.

If a constitutional court may infer dissolution from a procedural deadline, the line between interpretation and supplementation becomes blurred. The court no longer merely says what the Constitution means; it also determines consequences that the text does not expressly establish. That may strengthen functionality in the short term, but it weakens textual predictability in the long term.

Article 86(2) may impose a mandatory deadline. But not every mandatory deadline entails the most serious constitutional consequence. If failure to comply with a deadline is to result in dissolution, that consequence must be expressly provided. Here, it is found in Article 82(1)(3) and Article 86(6), not in Article 86(2).

The Comparative Lesson

In parliamentary democracies, dissolution is treated as an extraordinary constitutional remedy because parliament most directly represents the sovereign. Terminating its mandate cannot be the product of expansive interpretation, even when the aim is to avoid institutional crisis.

Kosovo’s Constitution reflects this logic. It expressly provides for dissolution in specific situations, including failure to elect the President within sixty days from the beginning of the procedure and failure after the third round of voting. The existence of these express clauses is itself a reason for courts to hesitate before deriving an additional dissolution consequence from a different provision.

Conclusion

The judgment of 25 March 2026 is important because it rendered the premature decree legally ineffective. In this respect, the result was correct. Yet the reasoning remains questionable because it transformed Article 86(2) from a time-limit provision into part of a sanctioning mechanism for dissolution.

The Court would have been more convincing had it remained closer to the text: on 6 March, neither the sixty-day period under Article 82(1)(3) nor the scenario of failure after three rounds of voting under Article 86(6) had materialised. That would have been sufficient to invalidate the decree.

Ultimately, Kosovo’s case reminds us of an indispensable principle: in constitutional matters, especially when the mandate of parliament is at stake, a correct result is not enough. The path to that result must also comport with the principles of textual authority, legal certainty, and protection of the representative mandate.

Flamur Hyseni is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Prishtina.

Suggested Citation: Flamur Hyseni, ‘Kosovo’s Dissolution Case: Correcting the Result, Failing to Protect the Constitutional Text’ IACL-AIDC Blog (1 September 2026) Kosovo’s Dissolution Case: Correcting the Result, Failing to Protect the Constitutional Text