Željka Cvijanović

She has been the Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina since November 2022 and was previously Prime Minister and President of Republika Srpska. She was the SNSD's candidate for the Serb member of the Presidency in the 2026 general election.

Career

Cvijanović, born Željka Grabovac, studied at the University of Sarajevo and holds a degree in English language and literature and a master's in diplomatic law from the University of Banja Luka. She was Prime Minister of Republika Srpska from 2013 to 2018 and its President from 2018 to 2022. In the 2022 general election she won the Serb seat on the Presidency with 51.65 percent, ahead of Mirko Šarović with 35.45 percent, the first woman on the Presidency since the war. She chaired the Presidency in 2022-2023 and 2024-2025. Wikipedia reports that she won re-election in 2026 with 297,748 votes (55.58 percent).

Positions

Cvijanović belongs to the SNSD, led by Milorad Dodik, which dominates Republika Srpska. Wikipedia lists the party's ideology as social democracy, left-conservatism, Serbian nationalism and Euroscepticism, and says it has moved since the late 2000s towards more assertive advocacy of Serbian nationalism. In the Presidency she sits alongside Bosniak and Croat members elected on the same ballot.

Controversies

Cvijanović was on the United States sanctions list for Western Balkans officials. On 29 October 2025 the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control removed her, with Dodik and dozens of others, from that list, according to N1; the Treasury gave no further reasoning, and N1 linked the move to an informal understanding between Dodik and the new US administration.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Wikipedia · Wikipedia · N1 · N1

Photo: European Union, Attribution, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)