Kosovo PM Albin Kurti wins election amid tensions with Brussels and Washington – POLITICO Europe

But Kurti’s ruling party fell short of a majority and will need to find a coalition partner if it hopes to continue in power. The ruling leftist-populist Self-Determination (VVL) party of Prime Minister Albin Kurti won Kosovo’s general election Sunday, according to preliminary results, setting the country on course for renewed confrontation with the United States and the European Union over its treatment of its Serb minority.With 88 percent of votes counted, VVL won 41.3 percent, with the right-wing Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) finishing second on 21.8 percent, followed by the center-right Democratic League (LDK) on 18.1 percent and the AAK-Nisma leftist-nationalist coalition on 7.6 percent.As it stands, the vote share means that VVL will need to find a coalition partner — which could prove a challenge, given Kurti’s pro-Albanian nationalism and the need for compromise to break Kosovo’s international isolation.There was a delay in announcing the official results due to an hours-long Central Election Commission website outage.“Everything went according to plan,” Kurti said following the election. “We won, and this is confirmation of a good, prosperous and democratic government.”Previously a province of Serbia, Kosovo declared independence in 2008 following a brutal civil war in the 1990s between Serbs and Albanians in the former Yugoslavia. VVL was the first party to have served its full-four year term in government in the capital Pristina, after winning 50.3 percent of votes in 2021.“There has never been more war than against this government,” Kurti said. “With oligarchs who give money without accounting, and with the opposition who make deals even with the devil against our government. Even though they have lost again, they will remain an opposition, because they do not want the best for either the state or the people.”“We have held free, fair, and well-organized elections, a testament to the strength of our democracy,” Kosovo’s Deputy PM Besnik Bislimi said. “We thank the people of Kosova for giving us a commanding win and a mandate to govern—a clear sign of trust in our good and transparent governance. We look forward to forming the new government and serving the people with dedication.”Since 2021, Kurti has pressed the ethnic Serb community in Kosovo’s north, which numbers up to 50,000 people out of Kosovo’s 1.6 million population, to accept Pristina’s authority. That has included shutting down Serbian banks and parallel governance institutions in the enclave and forcing Serbs to put Kosovar license plates on their vehicles.Kurti has also refused to honor a 2013 agreement with Serbia to allow Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo to form autonomous educational, health care and economic associations, saying at a political rally Feb. 1 that “our government … will never say yes” to such associations.Kurti has defended these hardline policies as a rule-of-law necessity, but the EU suspended some financial aid to Kosovo in June 2023. Kosovo’s EU membership application also remains stalled, with five member countries yet to recognize its independence.Meanwhile, Pristina hasn’t fared much better with the second administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.Since 1999, the development arm of the Washington government, USAID, has invested over $1 billion in Kosovo, but a recent decision by Trump to freeze foreign aid for three months — some of which funded Kosovo’s Western integration — blindsided Pristina.Even if the aid is renewed, Kurti clearly has political fences to mend in Washington.Richard Grenell, who served as special envoy for peace negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia from 2019 to 2021 during Trump’s first term, is now back as the president’s envoy for special missions. On Feb. 3 he wrote on X that to secure peace in the Balkans the Trump administration needed “trustworthy partners,” and accused Kurti of “claiming he is close to the U.S.,” which is “absolutely false.”“The Kurti Government was not trustworthy during Trump’s first term, nor during Biden’s term,” Grenell wrote. “Both Republicans and Democrats have criticized Kurti consistently for taking unilateral actions that destabilize the region. So has the EU and NATO. The international community is united against Kurti.”This story has been updated.More than 100,000 people hit the streets Friday across Slovakia and elsewhere in Europe to defend the country’s Western orientation.Bratislava and Kyiv have been at loggerheads since the Slovak leadership cut off weapons flows to Ukraine and embraced Moscow talking points.“There will be more and more of us. Those who want to live in our little Slovakia, but in a civilized Europe,” said Eva Kulová, 84, who helped topple Communism.Political acrimony is rocking Bratislava.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/kosovo-election-albin-kurti-wins/