The year-and-a-half-long instability of Kosovo’s political system and the changing international environment were at the center of the Quo vadis Kosovo? conference organized by the John Lukacs Institute fpr Strategy and Politics of the Eötvös József Research Center at the Ludovika University of Public Service. According to the participants, the country is forced to confront deeper constitutional and political dilemmas.
The event was opened by László Márkusz, research fellow at the John Lukacs Institute, who pointed out that Kosovo’s domestic political developments rarely appear in international discourse with sufficient depth, even though the stability of the Western Balkans remains an issue of European significance.
The starting point of the first panel discussion, entitled Kosovo in the Trap of Elections, was the fact that Kosovo is once again facing parliamentary elections within a short period of time. According to the participants, understanding the current situation requires going back to the 2021 elections. Delfin Pllana, Ambassador of Kosovo to Budapest, emphasized that for a long time Kosovo’s political system had been built upon post-war political elites connected partly to the Kosovo Liberation Army and partly to the era of peaceful resistance. In contrast, the 2021 victory represented a system-critical movement that built its political agenda on anti-corruption and institutional reforms.
A specific feature of Kosovo’s electoral system is that out of the 120 parliamentary seats, twenty are reserved for minority communities, ten of which belong to the Serbian community. The entire country constitutes a single electoral district, and voters may cast their ballots through an open-list system. The system is built on the necessity of compromise: securing a parliamentary majority alone is insufficient for stable governance, since the election of the president requires broader parliamentary support. It is precisely this requirement that led to the current political deadlock, after parliament failed to reach an agreement on the presidential election.
This raised the question of whether the constitutional system itself causes recurring political crises. According to Naim Rashiti, head of the Balkans Policy Research Group, Kosovo’s present political functioning is fundamentally shaped by the fact that its institutional system was created in a post-war environment under strong international supervision. Kosovo’s constitutional system is modern and built on strong checks and balances; however, many political actors never truly felt ownership over it. Originally, the system aimed to prevent the re-emergence of ethnic and political conflict, which is why power-sharing and ethnic representation were given a prominent role. Rashiti argued, however, that over time an increasing number of political actors began to perceive this structure as an obstacle.
Kosovo’s current problems partly stem from the fact that the political system still operates according to post-conflict logic, while society and political generations have changed. The former political elite used the compromise- and power-sharing-based model to maintain its own positions, whereas some of the new political actors seek precisely to dismantle this system. The challenge lies in how constitutional balance can be maintained while also ensuring functional governance within a highly polarized political environment.
Leon Malazogu, political analyst and former Ambassador of Kosovo to Tokyo, also emphasized that within Kosovo’s political system the necessity of compromise gradually acquired a negative connotation. Coalition bargaining and constant political negotiations became associated, in the eyes of many voters, with clientelism and corruption. At the same time, Malazogu stressed that the current deadlock is not caused merely by personal conflicts, but rather by the institutional construction established after the war.
Regarding anti-corruption efforts, Tímea Zsivity, researcher at the Europe Strategy Research Institute of Ludovika University of Public Service, stated that the fight against corruption is one of the fundamental preconditions of stability and security. Referring to the European Commission’s 2025 report, she highlighted that Kosovo had made progress in several areas, for example through an increased number of final convictions in high-level corruption cases, although serious institutional problems still remain.
The second panel was entitled Kosovo in the International Arena. During the discussion, several participants emphasized that the EU-mediated dialogue launched in 2011 had originally been established to resolve practical issues such as documents, license plates, diplomas, and border crossings, but later gradually acquired increasing political significance. The 2013 Brussels Agreement was still regarded as a breakthrough, since it enabled the strengthening of Kosovo’s institutions and the integration of northern Serbian communities; however, political trust gradually eroded in the years that followed.
Lili Dorottya Mikó, doctoral student at Ludovika University of Public Service, pointed out that the dialogue has by now largely deteriorated into crisis management. The European Union has never clearly defined what the final goal of the negotiations should be. For Kosovo, normalization would in the long term mean international recognition and full international integration, whereas Serbia does not necessarily connect this concept to state recognition. According to Mikó, the two sides operate from entirely different political and historical narratives: Belgrade emphasizes territorial integrity and international law, while Pristina focuses on democratic legitimacy and state sovereignty.
Dragiša Mijačić, representative of the Serbian civil organization Chapter 35, argued that for Belgrade the dialogue is primarily part of a political process connected to European integration. For Serbia, the opening of EU accession negotiations constituted the main motivation for compromise; however, the slowdown of EU enlargement significantly reduced the willingness to cooperate. In his view, the migration crisis, Brexit, and later the war in Ukraine all contributed to the European Union losing its former credibility in the region, while the prospect of accession also appears increasingly distant. Mijačić stressed that there is still no significant political or social actor in Serbia openly supporting the recognition of Kosovo’s independence.
In contrast, Leon Malazogu identified uncertainty as the core problem of the process, while Naim Rashiti highlighted the loss of social support for the dialogue itself. The EU-mediated process failed to establish genuine trust between the parties, and disappointment with European integration has by now intensified both in Kosovo and Serbia.
The participants agreed that no quick solution to the current situation is visible in the short term. Dialogue remains necessary for the stability of the region; however, the events of recent years demonstrate that deeper political and social conflicts cannot be addressed merely through technical agreements. Several speakers emphasized that for the future of the Western Balkans it would be crucial for the European Union to once again become an active and creative actor in the region
Text: Orsolya Jancsó
Translation: JLI
Photos: Dénes Szilágyi