Ahead of this Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections in Kosovo, the country’s ex-president is warning that the results could determine whether Pristina will remain on course to join NATO and the EU.
In an interview with POLITICO, Vjosa Osmani took aim at incumbent Prime Minister Albin Kurti, whose reelection she said could jeopardize the country’s trajectory.
Osmani served as Kosovo’s president between 2021 and last April, when the national parliament failed to elect her successor, triggering a constitutional crisis.
“The future of Kosova cannot be held hostage by political ego,” she said, accusing Kurti of alienating European and U.S. allies. Osmani urged voters to instead pick a leader capable of taking “the right decisions that are going to … irreversibly anchor us within the Euro-Atlantic path.”
Since unilaterally declaring its independence from Serbia in 2008, Kosovo has struggled to find its place in the world.
While the United States and the rest of the G7 leading economies recognize the small, landlocked Balkan nation’s sovereignty, EU states such as Greece, Spain, Romania and Slovakia have declined to do so, complicating Pristina’s goal of joining both NATO and the EU.
According to Osmani, Kurti — who leads the left-leaning populist Vetëvendosje party — has made matters worse.
The politician, who briefly served as prime minister in 2020, was reelected in 2021 by promising to enact major reforms and further Euro-Atlantic integration, but during his term in office, relations with Brussels and Washington have been tumultuous.
After Kurti installed ethnic Albanian mayors in Serb-majority municipalities in the country’s north in 2023, Western officials accused his government of inflaming ethnic tensions.
Rather than moving forward with accession talks with the country, which formally applied for EU membership in 2022, Brussels instead imposed sanctions on Kosovo for failing to defuse the unrest in the affected municipalities, which were rocked by violent clashes.
Those penalties, which resulted in the suspension of EU economic aid to the country, were only lifted after local elections were held last year.
Kurti’s relationship with Washington has been similarly rocky.
In 2020, he accused U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration of working to overthrow his government in order to secure a land-swap deal with Serbia. More recently, however, the prime minister struck a more conciliatory tone, standing out as one of the few global leaders to applaud the U.S.’s decision to invade Venezuela and arrest its president, Nicolás Maduro.
Osmani argues that Kurti’s controversial policy decisions and statements have undermined Kosovo’s standing on the global stage. “He needed to build trust, and he’s done the opposite,” she said.
The ousted aspirant
Osmani has many reasons to oppose Kurti.
Earlier this year the prime minister, who declined POLITICO’s requests for comment, refused to support her reelection bid in parliament, and instead backed nominees from his own party. But after none of the candidates secured the necessary votes, the country lurched into a crisis that ultimately led to this Sunday’s snap vote.
The parliamentary election, which is the third to be held in just over a year, is unlikely to resolve Kosovo’s complex domestic political situation. Although no reliable polls are available, political analysts predict the ruling Vetëvendosje party will once again secure the most seats, allowing Kurti to remain prime minister.
But it remains unclear who will become president: no party is expected to control the two-thirds majority of the parliament required to elect a new head of state, which means complex negotiations are on the horizon.
Osmani is standing for parliament in Sunday’s elections but is keen to once again occupy the presidency, which gives its holder the power to return legislation to lawmakers for reconsideration and appoint key judicial and administrative figures.
An independent who was previously a high-ranking member of center-right Democratic League of Kosovo, she accused Kurti of seeking to consolidate power by weakening the presidency.
“He wants to control all institutions in their entirety,” she said, citing efforts to install “a president who is silent abroad and entirely limited at home.”
She also said that, after years of unproductive EU-mediated negotiations yielded little progress, Washington should take a more direct role in the dialogue with Belgrade.
“Every single time that the U.S. was involved, the dialogue with Serbia was more successful,” she said. “Every single time that we didn’t have the attention of the U.S., the dialogue stalled and completely derailed.”
Bristling at Kurti’s strained relationship with Washington, Osmani — one of the few global leaders to agree to sit on Trump’s controversial Board of Peace initiative — framed Kosovo’s future as being inseparable from its alliance with the U.S.
“I want Kosova to stop asking for permission to exist,” she said. “And to start acting with the confidence of a sovereign state.”