Politics Prime Minister Kurti declares himself the winner of the Kosovo elections
Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti has declared himself the winner after the parliamentary elections in his country. "We have won and we will form the next government," he told supporters in Pristina shortly after midnight. According to the election observer group Democracy in Action, which relied on the results from 98 percent of polling stations, Kurti's ruling party Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) received 40.4 percent of the vote - and thus lost its absolute majority.
10.02.2025, 01:45
SDA
Around two million citizens were called to vote. Kosovo is a potential candidate for EU membership. For the first time since 2010, a representative body in the country has exhausted its four-year mandate.
In the election four years ago, Kurti's left-wing nationalist formation won 50.3 percent of the vote. According to Democracy in Action, this time the liberal Democratic Party (PDK) received 21.7 percent of the vote, the bourgeois Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) 17.5 percent and the conservative Alliance for the Future (AAK) 7.2 percent.
Problems with the vote count
Other parties and alliances failed to reach the five percent hurdle that decides who enters the parliament. Irrespective of this, 20 of the 120 seats are reserved for ethnic minorities: 10 for Serbs and a further 10 for other groups, including Bosniaks, Turks and Roma.
The state election commission had serious problems with electronic data processing on election day and did not want to announce the provisional final result until Monday morning.
In the old parliament, Kurti's party had a comfortable majority together with MPs from the ethnic minorities. The 49-year-old had promised comprehensive reforms of the judiciary and administration when he took office, but was unable to deliver on many of them. If he now wants to continue to govern, he will probably have to join forces with the PDK or the LDK. Theoretically, however, a government alliance without the participation of the Kurti party is also conceivable.
