Many people in Switzerland are also interested in the new elections in Kosovo taking place on Sunday (today).
Dec 28, 2025, 05:42Dec 28, 2025, 05:42
Zurich parliamentarian Reis Luzhnica is optimistic. Luzhnica sits for the SP in the Zurich city parliament and is a member of the Vetëvendosje (Self-Determination) party of Kosovo’s acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti. He is optimistic ahead of the parliamentary elections. “In Switzerland, around 14,500 people registered for the elections. Even if the potential were higher, it is a good value and very important for Vetëvendosje,” he said when asked by the Keystone-SDA news agency. The diaspora tends to vote more progressively – similar to the urban centers in Kosovo.
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti.Image: keystone
The Prime Minister recently visited Zurich on an election campaign visit. “Despite short-term planning, the event went very well; the hall was full with around 3,000 people,” says Luzhnica. Compared to the elections in February, he noticed that people were more determined to actually take part in the elections. Back then, we often heard statements like “Vetëvendosje wins anyway, my vote makes no difference.” Many also found registering or voting from Switzerland to be too time-consuming.
Today there is a greater awareness that every vote counts. “Accordingly, more people have registered, and many are also planning to use the Christmas holidays to visit their families in Kosovo and vote locally,” says Luzhnica. In a personal assessment, based on conversations with potential voters, he expects Vetëvendosje to win the election.
Two failed attempts
Depending on the method of counting, 160,000 or 250,000 people from the Balkan state live in Switzerland, as Federal President Karin Keller-Sutter said on the occasion of the state visit of Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani Sadriu to Bern in May. At the time, both presidents mentioned the large Kosovar diaspora in Switzerland and the bridge it forms between the two countries.
After two failed attempts to form a government, early parliamentary elections are imminent in Kosovo on Sunday. The parliament of the Balkan country, which has only been independent since 2008, had previously refused to trust Kurti and his party colleague Glauk Konjufca in the election for prime minister.
Kurti’s pro-Western, social democratic party had become the strongest party in the last election, but no longer received a sufficient majority. Since the election, Parliament had been arguing for months about filling the positions for the parliamentary presidency and was therefore unable to officially constitute itself for a long time.
Kosovo, which is now inhabited almost exclusively by Albanians, was formerly a Serbian province. After uprisings against Serbian rule and a NATO intervention in 1999, the country declared independence in 2008. More than a hundred states – including Switzerland – recognize independence, but not Serbia and Russia. Since Kosovo is not recognized by five EU countries, including Spain and Greece, it only has the status of a “potential candidate country”. (sda)