More than two months after February’s parliamentary elections, Kosovo is trapped in an institutional crisis as parties cannot find a solution to unblock the election of parliament’s speaker.
The constitutive session of the Kosovo Parliament, which opened on April 15, 2025, has now been interrupted for the seventh time, reminiscent of political deadlocks from 2014 and 2017. Once again, a flawed constitutional precedent—prioritising the largest party to propose the Parliament Speaker even without securing a majority—has caused political chaos.
Albulena Haxhiu, acting Minister of Justice and Vetëvendosje’s nominee for Speaker, has failed five times to secure the minimum of 61 votes, as opposition parties refuse to support her candidacy. Vetëvendosje remains determined that Haxhiu is a qualified and rightful choice, forcing the parliament to reconvene every 48 hours without progress.
For Kosovars, the situation feels like déjà vu, with familiar scenarios but swapped political roles. If the parliament had been constituted promptly, Kosovo would already be on the path to forming a new government. Instead, the country faces another institutional blockade, deepening political instability.
A crisis foretold
Kosovo Government building. Photo: Atdhe Mulla
A similar crisis unfolded more than a decade ago, in 2014, when the winning party of that election Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, failed to secure a majority in the parliament. In response, a new majority coalition composed of other parties unilaterally elected Isa Mustafa, leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, as the parliament’s Speaker.
The deadlock was resolved several months later by a Constitutional Court ruling, which provided a temporary solution but left behind long-term consequences for the functioning of Kosovo’s parliamentary system. The 2014 ruling granted the exclusive right to propose the Speaker of the Parliament to the party that won the most votes in the elections, even if it did not command a parliamentary majority.
While this ruling appeared to uphold the “will of the people,” it actually undermined a principle of parliamentary democracy: it is not the largest party, but a parliamentary majority, that directs the legislature.
The Court’s decision—which annulled Mustafa’s election despite 65 votes in his favor—set a precedent that re-emerged in 2017, when the PAN (PDK, AAK, NISMA) coalition struggled for over a month to elect a Speaker. Today, in 2025, history repeats itself, with Vetëvendosje now facing the same structural blockade.
These blockades could have been avoided had Kosovo’s Constitutional Court judges, agreed with US Judge Robert Carolan in 2014, who offered a different interpretation of the notion of a “parliamentary majority.”
In his opinion for the decision, Carolan emphasised that the drafters of Kosovo’s Constitution had intentionally changed the rules from those stipulated under the previous Constitutional Framework set during the UNMIK administration. Under the Constitutional Framework, the Speaker was required to come from the party or coalition that received the highest number of votes.
“Unlike the Constitutional Framework, which simply provided that the candidate from the party or coalition with the most votes should become Speaker, the drafters of the Constitution required that the Speaker also be elected by a majority vote of the Parliament members,” Carolan wrote.
According to him, this indicated that the Constitution’s authors intended for the “largest parliamentary group” not to be the party with the most popular votes, but rather the group capable of successfully electing a Speaker with a majority within the parliament.
Yet the majority of Kosovo’s Constitutional Court judges rejected this view, opening the door to a narrow interpretation that continues to paralyse institutions.
This narrow, dysfunctional interpretation has paved the way for successive political crises, where parties, even without securing a majority, insist on their right to propose a Speaker based on the 2014 ruling—as Vetëvendosje is doing now.
Battle of numbers
Illustration: Kosovo Election. Photo: BIRN/Denis Sllovinja
Out of fear of the unknown—particularly in light of Donald Trump’s return to the White House—both political blocs seem to prefer dragging out the process, cloaking their actions in the rhetoric of principles, legality, and constitutionality. One side insists on exercising a supposed constitutional right, despite lacking a majority, while the other barricades itself as an opposition force against the electoral winner.
Yet in true parliamentary systems, compromise is not optional; it is essential. Without a functioning parliament, Kosovo risks major setbacks. The country could lose access to the first installment of over 60 million euros from the EU Growth Plan grant. Progress toward Council of Europe membership is frozen. State agencies and public enterprises, already operating with expired boards, remain paralysed.
Meanwhile, instead of focusing on governance programs or national strategies, Kosovo’s political debate has been reduced to a battle over numbers and names—criticism, blame, and mutual disdain dominating the public sphere.
The absurdity of the current crisis underscores the urgent need for presidential intervention. As the guarantor of democratic functioning, the President must act to break the deadlock. Without a constituted parliament, even the option of calling new elections remains off the table.
Under the parliament’s Rules of Procedure, the constitutive session must reconvene every 48 hours until a Speaker is elected. Vetëvendosje, which won 42.3 percent of the vote and secured 48 of the 120 seats, remains far short of the 61 seats needed for a majority. PDK holds 24 seats, LDK 20, and AAK eight.
Additionally, 20 seats in the Kosovo parliament are reserved for non-majority communities—ten for the Serbian community, and ten for Bosniak, Turkish, Gorani, Ashkali, Egyptian, and Romani communities combined.
English version prepared by Ardita Zeqiri