Kosovo Has Voted Three Times in 18 Months. It Still Cannot Form a Government

The crisis inside the Democratic League of Kosovo has stalled coalition talks — but the deeper problem is a political system that keeps producing elections without producing institutions

Europe’s democratic systems are increasingly being tested not by the absence of elections, but by what happens after them.

A vote can produce a winner without producing a government. A parliament can reflect the result of an election without being able to turn that result into functioning institutions. And political parties can repeatedly return to voters while remaining unable to resolve the disputes that brought the crisis in the first place.

In Kosovo, this cycle has become impossible to ignore.

The country has held three parliamentary elections in just eighteen months. Yet the latest vote has not ended the political paralysis that triggered the previous one. Instead, it has produced another fragmented parliament, another difficult coalition negotiation and another institutional crisis — this time inside the Democratic League of Kosovo, one of the country’s oldest political forces.

The party’s internal struggle is now holding up the formation of a new government.

That may appear to be a narrow dispute over the leadership of one political party. It is not. Kosovo’s entire political system is once again dependent on whether its parties can reach a compromise that none of them appears particularly willing to make.

The Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), which won 18 seats in the June parliamentary election, could potentially provide the parliamentary support needed for Albin Kurti’s Vetëvendosje to form a government. But the party is now divided over the future of its leader, Lumir Abdixhiku.

At least 148 delegates have launched a formal initiative to remove him from office. Several LDK MPs have also expressed dissatisfaction with his leadership. Abdixhiku has consequently suspended coalition negotiations with Vetëvendosje — leaving Kosovo’s next government hostage to a leadership battle inside a party that may be essential to forming it.

The immediate crisis is inside the LDK.

The deeper crisis is Kosovo’s inability to turn elections into political stability.

The real crisis is the absence of a political exit

It would be easy to describe the situation as another Balkan dispute between rival politicians. That would miss the more important development.

Kosovo’s political system is increasingly producing outcomes in which no single party can govern, while the parties themselves remain unable — or unwilling — to build the compromises necessary to make institutions function.

The result is a recurring cycle.

Elections produce a fragmented parliament. The parliament cannot reach agreement on the key institutional appointments. Constitutional deadlines approach. Political parties blame one another. The courts are asked to interpret the rules. Eventually, the country returns to the ballot box.

Then the process begins again.

Kosovo has held three parliamentary elections in eighteen months. The latest vote was itself triggered after political parties failed to elect a president within the required constitutional framework. The country spent much of the previous year and a half trapped in institutional paralysis, with the Constitutional Court repeatedly becoming an essential referee in disputes that political actors were unable to resolve themselves.

That is not a sustainable model of democratic governance.

Courts can interpret constitutions. Elections can renew mandates. Neither can substitute for political compromise.

The European Union has been unusually direct about this. Following the June election, EU representatives urged Kosovo’s political parties to form stable institutions and warned that the country’s political leaders must now translate electoral results into functioning governance.

The message is increasingly difficult to ignore: Kosovo’s democratic problem is not that it lacks elections. It is that its political system is struggling to produce the institutions those elections are supposed to create.

Europe is offering Kosovo a window — but the window will not remain open indefinitely

The timing matters.

The European Union is once again placing enlargement at the centre of its strategic agenda. For Kosovo, that creates a potentially important opportunity. The country can access substantial European financial support through the Western Balkans Growth Plan and other pre-accession instruments, with funding tied to reforms, institutional capacity and the ability to implement agreed measures.

But political instability directly undermines that opportunity.

A government that does not exist cannot implement reforms. A parliament that cannot function cannot pass the legislation required to unlock them. And a political system permanently consumed by disputes over institutional appointments has little capacity to deal with the deeper challenges facing the country: economic development, energy security, relations with Serbia, the position of the Serb minority and the long-term question of Euro-Atlantic integration.

This is why the current crisis matters beyond Pristina.

Kosovo remains one of the most politically sensitive spaces in Europe. Its relationship with Serbia remains unresolved. Its institutions are closely watched by the European Union and the United States. Its security environment remains inseparable from wider Balkan stability.

Every month of political paralysis creates more than domestic frustration. It reduces Kosovo’s ability to act strategically at a moment when the geopolitical environment around the Western Balkans is becoming more competitive.

The country’s political leaders are therefore negotiating over more than ministerial positions.

They are negotiating over whether Kosovo can remain a functioning partner for the actors that have invested most heavily in its political and economic future.

The LDK is now the hinge of Kosovo’s next political phase

The immediate question is whether the LDK can resolve its internal conflict quickly enough to return to coalition negotiations.

The more consequential question is what kind of deal it would be prepared to make.

The numbers suggest that a simple agreement between Vetëvendosje and the LDK could provide the foundation for a new government. But a durable settlement would likely require a broader distribution of institutional power.

The presidency is particularly important.

Kosovo’s political crisis has repeatedly been linked to the inability of parliament to elect a head of state. A government coalition that ignored this problem would risk reproducing the same deadlock in a different form.

That is why the potential return of Vjosa Osmani to the presidency is such a sensitive issue. For the LDK, she remains a major political figure. For Kurti, supporting her would require a significant political compromise after years of rivalry.

Other parties are also trying to turn the institutional crisis into leverage. The Alliance for the Future of Kosovo has indicated that its MPs could help facilitate the election of a new president, but only in exchange for a set of political conditions, including Kosovo’s participation in a US-backed liquefied natural gas infrastructure project.

The message is clear: every parliamentary seat now carries a price.

This is not necessarily a failure of democracy. Coalition politics are, by definition, transactional. The danger lies elsewhere — in the possibility that the negotiations become so focused on personalities and short-term advantage that no one is willing to construct a settlement capable of surviving the next political dispute.

Kosovo does not simply need a government.

It needs a political arrangement that can function.

The deadline is approaching

The new Assembly must be constituted by 7 August. Only after that can the constitutional procedures for forming a government and electing a president move forward.

That deadline gives Kosovo’s parties a limited window to resolve several problems at once: the LDK’s leadership crisis, the distribution of institutional power and the question of who can command a parliamentary majority.

If the negotiations fail, the country could once again move towards another round of institutional uncertainty — or, in the worst-case scenario, another election.

That would be a particularly damaging outcome.

The June vote already showed signs of public fatigue. Turnout fell sharply compared with the previous election. Repeated elections may preserve the appearance of democratic activity, but they can also gradually weaken public confidence when citizens see little change in the ability of politicians to govern.

A democracy cannot rely indefinitely on asking voters to solve problems that political parties refuse to solve themselves.

Kosovo’s European test is now a test of compromise

The central question facing Kosovo is no longer who won the election.

Vetëvendosje won the largest share of the vote. That is clear.

The question is whether the country’s political system can transform that victory into a functioning government without creating another institutional crisis.

For the LDK, the current struggle over Abdixhiku’s leadership is an internal battle with national consequences. For Kurti, the negotiations are an opportunity to consolidate power — but also a test of whether Vetëvendosje can build the broader political arrangements required to govern a fragmented country.

For Kosovo’s European partners, the message is even more fundamental.

The country has already demonstrated that it can hold elections. What it now needs to demonstrate is that its political leaders can compromise after them.

That is the part of the democratic process that cannot be outsourced to courts, international partners or another election.

Kosovo’s citizens have already voted three times in eighteen months.

Now, finally, the country’s political class has to decide whether it is capable of governing.

Sources: Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa, OSW, EU Office in Kosovo