Kosovo’s political crisis shows no signs of ending: The country’s parliament failed to elect a new president on Tuesday, following a Constitutional Court ruling that had set that date as the deadline.
If a new President had not been elected by April 28, Parliament would have had to be dissolved – and that is exactly what happened. Kosovo will now hold another election in June – the third since February 2026.
The latest crisis arose because Prime Minister and head of the Self-Determination (Vetevendosje) movement, Albin Kurti, was unable to reach a consensus with opposition parties on a joint candidate for the presidency. In the last election held in late December 2025, Vetevendosje received about 5% of the vote.
Now that Parliament has been dissolved, Kurti’s government, which was formed only in February, is in office only on a caretaker basis.
Kurti and Usmani parted ways
Vjosa Osmani, who served as President of Kosovo for five years between 2021 and early April 2026, had originally intended to run for a second term. But he did not receive the support of his prime minister, even though both of them had been considered the hope for Kosovo’s new political leadership five years earlier.
Kurti did not explicitly say that he would not support Usmani for a second term. He justified his lack of support by simply saying that he could not secure more than 66 votes for his election. This is the number of seats his party has access to in parliament, along with the ruling parties and the non-Serbian minority. But to elect the President, at least 80 votes out of total 120 are required.
Osmani openly expressed his intention to run for re-election when his term ends on 4 April. He told local media outlets that at the time he had “Kurti’s support” and that he had promised him that he would support him.
“You are the best president of the 21st century,” he said. But later the situation changed: “Then I received a new assessment from Kurti that the Vetevendosje parliamentary group and he personally would no longer support me.”
At an extraordinary session on 28 April, Kurti nominated a civil society candidate, doctor and human rights activist Feride Rushiti. But opposition parties boycotted the vote.
Kurti and Usmani ‘ambitious and competitive’
Naim Rashiti from the Balkan Policy Research Group told DW that the partnership between Kurti and Usmani was never “natural” but rather “a kind of ad-hoc electoral alliance.”
He said that both politicians were “very ambitious and competitive towards others and each other, and often took opposing positions on political goals.”
He said that both generally agreed on domestic policy but they had differences on foreign policy.
“In the international arena, the inconsistent political positions of the two sides often lead to confusion,” he said. “The president often acted as a kind of shield or damage-control figure. She often led foreign policy without proper consultation.”
Ehat Miftaraj, a political analyst at the Kosovo Law Institute (IKD), told DW that Kurti was considered a “less predictable actor” compared to Osmani, who was considered more cooperative toward international partners.
Kurti, on the other hand, had at times taken a more confrontational stance: “This has not only led to tensions between the two leaders, but also raised questions at the international level regarding the coherence and stability of Kosovo’s foreign policy.”
Slowing down EU integration and negotiations with Serbia
The fact that Kosovo has been unable to achieve political and institutional stability for the past year and a half is hindering both the reforms demanded by the EU and the EU-mediated negotiations with Serbia.
“While frequent elections show that Kosovo is a functioning democracy,” Miftraj said, “they also show that the country has limited abilities to pursue its strategic interests.”
“As a result, the status of Kosovo in the negotiations [with Serbia] is weak and focuses on the rule of law [EU] Integration processes have been removed. “Kosovo is devoting more energy to managing internal crises than pursuing its agenda for European integration,” Miftaraj said. “With the new EU strategy related to the Growth Plan, Kosovo, which continues to lag behind in the region, will potentially lose hundreds of millions of euros in financial aid.”
This article was translated from German.