Duties and Functions
The degree of power actually conferred upon the president by the Basic Law is ambiguous. However, in practice, holders of the office treat it as a largely ceremonial one and act with the advice of the Federal Government. Unlike many constitutions, the Basic Law does not designate the head of state as the commander-in-chief of the military (ceremonially or otherwise). This role is vested in times of peace in the Minister of Defense, going to the Chancellor rather than the president in times of war, by Article 65a. Nevertheless Germany cannot declare a state of war without the approval of the president. The president carries out the following duties:
Read more about this topic: President Of Germany
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