PRISTINA: Kosovo heads to the polls for parliamentary elections on Sunday, the third in just 18 months, as no one party has been able to gain a strong enough majority to pull the Balkan country out of a political crisis.
Europe’s youngest nation has aspirations to join the European Union but has had no functioning government for much of the last year as its fractured parliaments failed to elect first a speaker and then a new head of state.
No opinion polls have been conducted recently but analysts predict victory again for Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s Vetevendosje party. However, he will still need to reach a compromise with opposition parties to secure the two-thirds majority required to elect a new president, they say.
Kurti’s party won 51.1 percent of the vote in the last election in December, up from 42 percent in February 2025, but could not agree with other parties on a candidate for the largely ceremonial presidency, triggering the dissolution of parliament in April and another snap election.
The EU has urged politicians in Kosovo — which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 — to create strong institutions that can deliver the reforms needed to join the bloc.
