Kosovo has elected Justina Shiroka Pula as its new president, making her the country’s first Catholic head of state in a nation where the overwhelming majority of the population identifies as Muslim.
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Her election is notable not only because she becomes the third woman to serve as Kosovo’s president, but also because she is Catholic in a country whose population is overwhelmingly Muslim. Kosovo’s 2024 census recorded approximately 93.5% of the population as Muslim and 1.75% as Catholic, making Shiroka Pula’s election a notable development in the country’s religiously diverse society.
Her religious background did not appear to be a central issue in the political negotiations that led to her candidacy. Instead, her selection emerged from a last-minute political agreement between Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s Vetëvendosje movement and the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), allowing parliament to reach the required majority and avoid another snap parliamentary election.
Shiroka Pula was nominated at the final stage of the constitutional deadline, with PDK leader Bedri Hamza accepting her candidacy while his party put forward Eliza Hoxha as a rival candidate. Shiroka Pula ultimately secured 81 votes, while Hoxha received one vote and two ballots were declared invalid.
Her election came amid a prolonged political crisis in Kosovo. Parliament had been facing a constitutional deadline to elect a new president, and failure to do so could have triggered another round of parliamentary elections. The agreement over Shiroka Pula’s candidacy therefore served as a last-minute compromise between the governing and opposition camps.
Who is Justina Shiroka Pula?
Shiroka Pula is an economist, professor and academic who has spent decades in Kosovo’s academic and public institutions. Born in Pristina in 1953, she graduated from the University of Pristina’s Faculty of Economics in 1976 and later completed postgraduate studies in economic development theory and policy at the University of Zagreb. She earned her doctorate at the University of Pristina.
She began her professional career at the National Bank of Kosovo before joining the University of Pristina as an academic in 1978. She also pursued postdoctoral studies in Austria and the United States.
In 2025, Shiroka Pula became the first woman to lead the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts, a position she held before becoming president.
She also has political experience. From 2008 to 2011, she served as Kosovo’s Minister of Energy and Mining under the Democratic Party of Kosovo, and from 2011 to 2014 she served as a PDK member of parliament.
Her election now places a Catholic woman at the head of a predominantly Muslim Kosovo, adding a distinctive dimension to a political transition that was already significant because of the country’s ongoing institutional crisis and the last-minute agreement that brought her to the presidency.
Shiroka Pula has said that her mandate belongs to Kosovo’s citizens and pledged to be “the president of all citizens.”