Before the first vote is even cast in Kosovo’s snap election on Sunday (December 28, 2025), experts predict it is unlikely to end the political crisis that has been gripping Europe’s youngest country for almost a year.

The Balkan nation has been politically deadlocked since the inconclusive vote in February, which outgoing premier Albin Kurti’s Vetevendosje (VV) party won but without enough seats to form a government.

After months of wrangling in a stalled parliament, the caretaker Prime Minister is going back to the electorate in a vote that analysts say will change very little.

“I think that the December 28 elections will not bring any clarity,” economist Mehmet Gjata told AFP as he predicted Mt. Kurti’s party would come out on top again.

Political analyst Fatime Hajdari agreed that “chances were high” that VV would secure the most votes, but said little else was clear.

Charismatic Kurti

If anyone can secure a majority, Mr. Kurti, once dubbed Kosovo’s Che Guevara for his radical past, has a rare record.

His party swept to power in 2021 in the largest electoral victory since the country’s independence from Serbia in 2008, taking over 50 percent of the vote.

From a student radical to a political prisoner, Mr. Kurti’s long path to the prime ministership has made him one of the most recognisable and influential politicians in Kosovo.

His blend of nationalism and a reform agenda has proven popular in a country whose sovereignty is still contested by Serbia, more than two decades after its war for independence ended.

But Gjata says things may have changed since Mr. Kurti’s last term.

“I’m afraid that the current political crisis will repeat itself, because VV will not get more than 50% of the votes,” the economist said.

“We will have no winner again.”

The largest opposition parties have refused to join a Kurti coalition, all but assuring a fragmented parliament.

The only realistic challenge to VV would be “cooperation” between the three major opposition parties, former foreign minister and opposition candidate Enver Hoxhaj said.

“I think that only they can offer stability,” Hoxhaj said.

Popular Serb policy blamed for ‘instability’

For Mr. Kurti and his party, countering Serbian influence in Kosovo has long been a focus, drawing support at home but criticism abroad.

When Serbian forces withdrew under NATO bombardment in 1999, it left many of its state structures in place for ethnic Serbs who live mainly in the north.

Mr. Kurti has labelled these services “instruments of intimidation, threat and control” and spent nearly his entire second term uprooting the system — and angering Belgrade in the process.

The resulting tensions in the north, which last flared into violence in 2023, have drawn sanctions from the European Union and caused Washington to accuse Mr. Kurti’s government of increasing “instability”.

But among his voters, the removal of Serbian influence remains popular, Hajdari said.

“The extension of sovereignty there is perceived by the citizens as a major success,” Hajdari said.

Most opposition parties avoid the issue, but the Serb List — which contests and retains most of the ten reserved Serb seats in parliament — regularly clashes with Mr. Kurti’s agenda in the north.

The minor party, with close ties to Belgrade, has previously called the government’s moves in the north “ethnic cleansing” and has said they are willing to work with other parties to keep Mr. Kurti out of power.

A year of ‘colossal damage’

Without a parliament, key international agreements have not been ratified, putting hundreds of millions of euros in assistance funds at risk.

Two national polls and a local election have cost one of Europe’s poorest nations at least 30 million euros ($35 million) this year.

Over a dozen government institutions and agencies have also been left leaderless, as the mandates of their managers expired without new ones being appointed.

Gjata said “colossal damage” had been done to the economy by divided lawmakers over the past months.

“They have put Kosovo in a state of anarchy,” he said.

While lawmakers bickered, the cost of the crisis would be felt by the Balkan nation’s citizens, Hajdari warned.

“That is precisely why Kosovo needs a stable and functional government that would focus on development and welfare.”

Published – December 26, 2025 12:24 pm IST

Kosovo’s government began on April 5 its first nationwide census since 2011, which will include surveying the ethnic Serb minority in the north, at a time when tensions with neighbouring Serbia are high.

The Agency of Statistics is conducting the 12-million euro ($13 million) census, originally set to take place in 2021 but was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Some 4,400 surveyors will interview residents in person from April 5 until May 17 to cover demographic and socioeconomic indicators that “will take Kosovo a step ahead toward integration into the European Union,” according to the agency’s website.

The Kosova government, the EU’s statistical office, Eurostat, U.N. organisations and the World Bank are funding the census which will tally the number of people residing in the country, family households, their education and employment, as well as the number of locals living abroad. Surveyors will also ask interviewees about damages suffered during the 1998-1999 war and if they have relatives who died or were tortured at the time.

Kosovo was a former Serbian province until a 78-day NATO bombing campaign in 1999 ended a war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo and pushed Serbian forces out. Belgrade does not recognise Kosovo’s 2008 independence.

Hazbije Qeriqi, the agency spokesperson, said they hoped for “a positive response from everybody.” In 2011 Kosovo had 1.74 million registered residents, of which nearly 1.5%, or about 26,000, are ethnic Serbs.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti called on the Serb minority on Wednesday to take part in the census. “When we make our plans for subsidies, investments, work, education … the health system, we should have the state of the population reflected in the budget,” he said.

Some Serbs in the northern part of the town of Mitrovica, at the centre of a region where most of the ethnic Serb minority lives, want to take part in the census. But the Srpska List party, the main party of the Serb minority in Kosovo which has close ties with Belgrade, called for a boycott of the census.

“We would like to say clearly to Albin Kurti and those who support him that the Serbian people will not participate in the upcoming fake census in his organisation, which he wants to confirm his shameful success in expelling Serbs,” said a message from the Srpska List posted on Facebook.

Boycotting has been a main tool ethnic Serbs have used in the last years, like boycotting all public institutions, or last year elections.

Kosovo’s recent decision to ban ethnic Serbs from using the Serbian currency — the dinar — locally has increased tensions and is threatening to cause chaos. The dinar is widely used in Serbian-run institutions, including schools and hospitals.

“A census in these circumstances of daily repression over our people and without the return of 2,50,000 displaced people would be pure legalisation of ethnic cleansing that has been carried out over our people since 1999,” the party said in a call to the international community.

Kosovo and Serbia want to join the EU. The 27-nation bloc has facilitated a dialogue to normalise ties between the two that has been riddled with hindrances, fuelling Western concerns about regional tensions escalating as a full-scale war rages in Ukraine.

Brussels has warned that the refusal of the two sides to compromise on several issues is jeopardising their chances of EU membership.