The prime minister of Iceland, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, has recommended that the powers of the Icelandic president be reduced. Specifically, and in a clear allusion to events earlier this year, Icenews reports that she has recommended that the president no longer be able to provoke a referendum.

The topicality of the proposal lies in the fact that it may be debated in the forthcoming ‘constitutional parliament of citizens’. A bill providing the legislative framework for such a parliament is currently before the Alþingi.

In this context, the prime minister’s comments are interesting in two ways.

Firstly, I had assumed that the constitutional parliament would focus on social/citizenship issues rather than the separation of powers. However, clearly this is not ruled out.

Secondly, as we all know, the Icelandic constitution represents the biggest gap between the written constitution and the ‘material’ constitution in practice. The president has tremendous constitutional powers, but, in practice, does not exercise them at all. So, while removing this specific presidential power might reduce one element of the president’s authority, the wording of the constitution in general would still be utterly presidential. This means that if a future president so wished, s/he would still have the constitutional grounds to act powerfully. It is only by convention that this does not happen. Remember that President Ólafur Grímsson is the first president to provoke a referendum. Before him, it had been assumed that, by convention, a president would not use such a power. So, if this power is taken away, then why should not the whole constitution be reworded to make sure that the president truly has no power, either materially or legally?