Kosovo: the time for a compromise has come

Here we go again. For the third time in sixteen months, the people of Kosovo have been called to the polls. The result is at once expected and revealing: the coalition led by Albin Kurti and his party Vetëvendosje (LVV) won again with 42.9 per cent of the votes, followed by the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) at 21.1 per cent, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) at 17.6 per cent, and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) at 7.1 per cent. Ten days after the June 7th election, the final result was announced after counting conditional votes, meaning those from the special voting program for persons with special needs, and from the diaspora. Vetëvendosje, as the leading party, won 382,865 votes, or 47.13 per cent of the total, a result that secured 53 seats in parliament. The Democratic Party won 157,893 votes, or 19.44 per cent, and secured 22 mandates. The Democratic League won 135,559 votes, or 16.69%, which translates to 18 seats, while the Alliance won 54,731 votes, or 6.74 per cent, securing 7 seats in parliament.

But the real story is not who wins, but who does not turn out. With participation at 36.9 per cent, the lowest in the history of independent Kosovo, abstention is the true victor. This is not a technical footnote; it is a political verdict that all parties should seriously consider.

How sixteen months of paralysis unfolded

To understand the weight of the low turnout, it is necessary to trace the trajectory that led Kosovo to this third election. On February 9th 2025, with a voter participation of 46.5 per cent, Vetëvendosje confirmed its position as the leading party with 42.3 per cent of the vote and 48 seats, thirteen short of the majority needed to govern. For Kurti, who had led the first government to complete a full mandate in Kosovo’s history, the victory turned immediately into a trap: the PDK and AAK categorically refused any coalition with LVV, making government formation impossible. Kosovo entered 2025 with a caretaker government without the authority to pass legislation, ratify international agreements, or implement the institutional reforms requested by its western allies.

The deadlock over the election of the Assembly Speaker involved unprecedented constitutional dimensions. LVV proposed the same candidate more than 57 times without ever securing the 61 votes required, making the snap elections on December 28th 2025, inevitable. The outcome was paradoxical: the party most associated with a year of paralysis emerged strengthened, winning 57 seats. Despite criticism over pre-electoral social transfers and the heavy mobilisation of the diaspora vote, LVV received a mandate to form a government. On February 11th 2026, Kurti was sworn in for his third term. But such instability was far from over.

The presidential crisis and the rift with Osmani

The formation of the third Kurti administration was almost immediately followed by a new constitutional confrontation. The mandate of President Vjosa Osmani was due to expire in April 2026, and Kurti's party, which had backed her for her first term, decided not to support her re-election, instead nominating Foreign Minister Glauk Konjufca as its preferred candidate. The break between the two had not been sudden; it solidified over time around a growing divergence rooted in Osmani's increasingly autonomous role in Kosovo's foreign policy, particularly in relation to the United States. The breaking point came when Kosovo joined, as a founding member, the Board of Peace promoted by Donald Trump, an initiative that Osmani pursued without prior consultation with the executive.

On March 5th 2026, the first attempt to elect a new president failed due to a lack of votes. Osmani dissolved parliament, but the Constitutional Court unanimously annulled the decree as legally void, granting deputies another 34 days. When Osmani's mandate expired on April 4th, Assembly Speaker Albulena Haxhiu assumed the role of acting president. After the Assembly failed to elect a president by April 28th, it was dissolved, and Haxhiu set June 7th as the date for new parliamentary elections. Kosovo was heading into its third electoral cycle in just over a year.

The presidential crisis, however, produced one politically significant consequence. Abandoned by Kurti and perceived as a divisive figure by the opposition, Osmani chose to return to the LDK, the party she had left six years earlier, bringing with her the symbolic weight of a completed five-year presidential mandate. This was not a concession, but a political gamble. The LDK leader Lumir Abdixhiku presented her as a natural candidate for the presidency, turning her return into a tangible asset ahead of the vote. The woman who had built her political rise by breaking with the LDK now became its most prominent figure.

The verdict of June 7th: when abstention is the message

The results of June 7th, still preliminary pending Kosovo's Central Election Commission recount procedures, confirm LVV’s resilience but point to something deeper. LVV itself, despite a third consecutive victory, lost over 100,000 votes compared to the December 2025 election. Kurti has a mandate hollowed out by a turnout of just 36.9 per cent: he can form a government with non-majority communities (excluding the nine Kosovo-Serb representatives from Srpska Lista), but lacks the votes to elect a president without opposition backing.

On the other hand, the opposition’s hope of mobilising undecided voters produced something quite different: a quiet but unambiguous protest by citizens exhausted by institutional paralysis, the ongoing economic crisis, and energy insecurity, who responded by punishing almost all parties at once through complete withdrawal from the vote.

The paradox is structural. In a pure proportional system like Kosovo’s (which provides neither constructive nor no-confidence mechanisms nor mandatory coalition thresholds), fragmentation is not an accident of politics but one of its endemic features. Over recent years, PDK and AAK have built their political identities against Kurti. Cooperating with him now would mean abandoning that entire position. Yet the abstention rate of 36.9 per cent is pushing each party to rethink this polarising strategy. Voters punished Kurti for refusing to end the institutional crisis, even though his party won 51 per cent of the votes in the elections on December 28th 2025. But they also rejected the opposition. The latter has shown neither the ability to work together internally nor the political maturity to resolve a blockade that has lasted over a year. Everyone feels affected; no one feels ready to ask citizens to go to another round of elections.

Three factors making compromise more likely

This time, at least three factors suggest that an agreement is more likely than at any point in the preceding sixteen months.

The first is the international pressure. The European Union recently lifted the punitive measures it had imposed on Pristina since 2023 and has pledged over 200 million euros in financial assistance, with further funds conditioned on institutional stability. Without a functioning government, those commitments risk lapsing, and the political cost of losing them would fall on all parties indiscriminately. European pressure is, paradoxically, the single factor most capable of pushing leaders toward agreement, more than any internal reflection on political maturity.

The second factor is Vjosa Osmani herself. Her return to LDK with an explicit presidential profile seemed to open a credible scenario in which if the diaspora vote have rewarded the LDK, the price for Kurti's governmental stability could have been his support for Osmani's presidential candidacy. The elections outcome was not as LDK expected, but this scenario still carries an internal logic and, amid significant pressure to avoid another turn of elections, it could translate into an institutional compromise. At the same time, LDK’s ineffective gamble on Osmani could open the door to another scenario, with LVV and PDK being closer than ever. The possibility of such a coalition, despite an historical opposition, would enable LVV to reach the 81 seats quorum necessary to elect the President, while rewarding both parties for listening the citizens’ calls for a compromise.

The third factor is generational. Such a massive abstention in a young country is not merely situational fatigue, but a signal of disengagement that, if not reversed, tends to entrench itself. Kosovo's parties now face a choice that is simple in its formulation and difficult in its execution: demonstrate that institutions work, or preside over the slow erosion of their own democratic legitimacy.

The message from citizens, after sixteen months of paralysis, is unequivocal. Compromise is not surrender, is the only strategy to follow in order to be rewarded by the population, the only form of political maturity that Kosovo can afford, and the one that the EU itself, in congratulating Kurti on his victory, has made clear it expects.

Asllan Zenunaj works at Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Kosovo and has previously contributed to security and peacebuilding research at the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (KCSS). He writes on Kosovo's institutional politics and European integration.