Albania is a unitary parliamentary constitutional republic, in which the president of Albania is the head of state and the prime minister of Albania is the head of government in a multi-party system. The executive power is exercised by the Government and the prime minister with its Cabinet. Legislative power is vested in the Parliament of Albania. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. The political system of Albania is laid out in the 1998 constitution. The Parliament adopted the current constitution on 28 November 1998. Historically Albania has had many constitutions. Initially constituted as a monarchy in 1913, Albania became briefly a republic in 1925, and then a authoritarian monarchy in 1928. In 1939 Albania was invaded by Fascist Italian forces, imposing a puppet state, and later occupied by Nazi German forces. Following the partisan liberation from the Nazis in 1944 a provisional government was formed, which by 1946 had transformed into a communist one-party state. In March 1991 democracy was restored with multi-party elections.
The Democratic League of Kosovo is the oldest and one of the largest political parties in Kosovo.
Lëvizja Vetëvendosje (LVV) is a left-leaning social democratic political party in Kosovo. It is a member of the Progressive Alliance, and an observer in the Party of European Socialists, and the Socialist International.
Fatmir Sejdiu is a Kosovo Albanian politician. He was the leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) and was the 1st President of Republic of Kosovo.
Albin Kurti is a Kosovar Albanian politician who has been serving as Prime Minister of Kosovo since 2021, having previously held the office from February to June 2020. He came to prominence in 1997 as the vice-president of the University of Pristina student union, and a main organizer of non-violent student demonstrations of 1997 and 1998. Kurti then worked in Adem Demaçi's office when the latter became the political representative of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Kurti has been a member of the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo since 2010 in three consecutive legislatures.
The Constitutional Court of Kosovo is the final authority for the interpretation of the Constitution of Kosovo and judicial review of laws for compliance with the constitution. The Constitutional Court is located in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. The Constitutional Court was established shortly after Kosovo's independence and heard its first cases in 2009.
Parliamentary elections were held in Kosovo on 6 October 2019. The main opposition parties received the most votes, led by Vetëvendosje and the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). Vetëvendosje leader Albin Kurti became Prime Minister, forming a governing coalition with the LDK on an anti-corruption platform. He is the second Prime Minister not to have been a fighter of the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 1990s.
Isa Mustafa is a retired Kosovar politician. Mustafa was the mayor of Pristina from December 2007 to December 2013 and served as the prime minister of Kosovo between December 2014 and September 2017. He was the leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) between 2010 and 2021.
Atifete Jahjaga is a Kosovar Albanian politician who served as the third President of Kosovo. She was the first female President of the Republic of Kosovo, the first non-partisan candidate and the youngest female head of state to be elected to the top office. She served as Deputy Director of the Kosovo Police, holding the rank of General Lieutenant Colonel, the most senior among women officers in Southeastern Europe.
The Serb List is a Serb minority political party in Kosovo. It was the dominant Serb party in Kosovo politics, claiming all ten of Assembly seats reserved for the community, from 2014 until all its members resigned and withdrew in 2022. The party retains close links to the Government of Serbia, led by the Serbian Progressive Party and President Aleksandar Vučić.
Parliamentary elections were held in Kosovo on 11 June 2017.
Avdullah Hoti is a Kosovan politician, who served as the Prime Minister of Kosovo from 3 June 2020 until 22 March 2021. He previously served as the minister of Finance of Kosovo between 2014 and 2017 in the PDK/LDK coalition government.
The LA coalition was a political alliance in Kosovo, between the Democratic League of Kosovo and The Alternative which stood in the 2017 elections along with the New Kosovo Alliance, who left the coalition after the elections. It was founded originally as LAA coalition.
Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu is a Kosovan jurist and politician who is the current president of Kosovo since 2021. Osmani was born and raised in Titova Mitrovica, SFR Yugoslavia and studied law at the University of Pristina and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She worked as an advisor to the president of Kosovo Fatmir Sejdiu before she was elected to the Assembly. Osmani held the position of Speaker of the Assembly of Kosovo from February 2020 to March 2021, and also served as acting president between November 2020 and March 2021 after the resignation of President Hashim Thaçi. Upon her election as president, Osmani became the second woman to hold the position, as well as the first person to have served as both acting president and president of Kosovo. Osmani successfully ran on an anti-corruption platform and has expressed a desire to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia. Since taking office, Osmani has returned the flag of Dardania as the official symbol of the presidency.
The First Kurti cabinet was formed in Kosovo on 3 February 2020 following a deal between the political parties Vetëvendosje, New Democratic Party, Democratic League of Kosovo and Serb List. On 25 March 2020, the government lost a vote of no confidence that was brought by the Democratic League of Kosovo.
Events from the year 2020 in Kosovo.
The Kosovo and Serbia economic normalization agreements, informally known as the Washington Agreement, are a pair of documents in which Kosovo and Serbia agreed to facilitate economic normalization among themselves. The documents were signed by the Prime Minister of Kosovo Avdullah Hoti and the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić on September 4, 2020, at the White House, in the presence of the President of the United States Donald Trump.
Driton Selmanaj is a Kosovo-Albanian politician.
Parliamentary elections were held in Kosovo on 14 February 2021. The results were a landslide victory for Vetëvendosje led by Albin Kurti and its coalition partner, Vjosa Osmani, former speaker of the parliament of Kosovo. The alliance won more than 50% of the total votes, the highest share since the first elections held in 2001, while their nearest rivals, the Democratic Party, finished in second place, trailing by more than 33%.
The Majko II Government was the 61st ruling government of the Republic of Albania, led by prime minister Pandeli Majko. It was officially mandated by president Rexhep Meidani on 22 February 2002. After the 2001 parliamentary elections, the alliance led by the Socialist Party won a seat majority for the second consecutive time and managed to form a government headed by Ilir Meta but due to internal conflicts within the party, Meta was forced to offer his resignation on 29 January 2002. Majko managed to persuade most of the party hierarchy, including its chairman Fatos Nano, to form a new government, although as it turned out, for the same reasons as the Meta II Government, he offered his resignation a few months later on 25 July 2002.
