Newly elected members of Kosovo’s Assembly have only a few hours left to conclude the constitutive session, as Friday marks the final day of the 30-day deadline set by the Constitutional Court.

Legal experts Eugen Cakolli and Naim Jakaj agree that exceeding this deadline would constitute a constitutional violation. However, they hold differing views on the steps that could be taken afterward.

Eugen Cakolli, from the Kosovo Democratic Institute, says that failure to constitute the Assembly within the deadline would place the country in the face of a serious constitutional violation.

According to him, August 7 represents an absolute deadline and cannot be extended, although Kosovo’s Constitution does not clearly define the legal consequences that would result from failing to respect it.

“More than a constitutional vacuum, I believe that the absence of this, so to speak, sanction is due to the fact that, when the Constitution was written, it was never assumed that we could reach the point where the Assembly would not even constitute itself,” Cakolli says.

On August 6, the leader of the Vetëvendosje Movement, Albin Kurti, requested that the constitutive session be postponed, arguing that more time was needed for discussions concerning the issue of the president. He did not propose a name for speaker of the Assembly, causing the constitution process to be suspended.

Cakolli believes that, if the Assembly is not constituted by midnight, the chair of the session, Avni Dehari, will no longer have a constitutional basis to call for its continuation.

“I believe it is clear that, after midnight tonight, the deputies will not have the right to meet even on their own initiative, let alone for Mr. Dehari, in this case, as chair of the session, to call them, because of his age,” he says.

According to Cakolli, the deadlock would affect more than just the functioning of the Assembly. He says that the ministers and deputy ministers currently in office, having taken the oath as deputies, cannot continue to exercise their executive functions at the same time.

As a result, he describes Kosovo’s caretaker government as “without legality and without legitimacy,” while warning that its decisions could be challenged in court.

Cakolli says the first legal course of action after the Assembly fails to constitute itself within the deadline would be to initiate a case before the Constitutional Court. Politically, however, he sees the resolution of the crisis as almost predetermined.

“Elections are unavoidable; it simply remains to find a way toward them,” Cakolli declares.

He adds that Kosovo has already lost time because of institutional crises and that new elections would be the most unfavorable scenario. Nevertheless, if the Assembly fails to be constituted, Cakolli sees no other constitutional alternative for resolving the deadlock.

Naim Jakaj, from the Kosovo Law Institute, also considers failure to respect the deadline for constituting the Assembly a constitutional violation, but differs from Cakolli regarding the steps to be taken after midnight on August 7.

Jakaj argues that, since no direct sanction has been established for failing to constitute the Assembly within the deadline, it remains possible for the constitutive session to be called even after August 7.

“Of course, even if today’s deadline passes, he [chair Dehari] should call the constitutive session. Unfortunately, there is no legal consequence. If there were one, it would be mandatory.”

He also expresses reservations about the possibility of referring the matter to the Constitutional Court again.

According to Jakaj, a new procedure before the Constitutional Court would not necessarily resolve the political crisis, since the court would have nothing to add beyond finding that “the deputies of the Assembly of Kosovo are obliged to act in the best interests of the country and that [the Assembly] should have been constituted within 30 days.”

Nevertheless, Jakaj warns that a continuation of the deadlock could have serious consequences.

He links the current crisis to the deadline for electing the president, recalling that the acting president’s tenure cannot last longer than six months, meaning until the beginning of October.

Albulena Haxhiu, chair of the 10th legislature, was sworn in as a deputy of the 11th legislature on August 6. She has been serving as acting president since April 2026, when Vjosa Osmani’s five-year term as head of state of Kosovo ended.

“We will enter a situation that we have never violated before… this will produce consequences that we have not seen previously, and which, in a democratic order, can freely be called the collapse of democracy,” Jakaj says.

He warns that, if the new institutions are not established by the end of the acting president’s mandate, Kosovo could be left without an authority capable of calling elections or giving the mandate to form a government to the candidate for prime minister.

Jakaj calls on the political parties to reach an agreement as soon as possible on constituting the Assembly, forming the government and electing the president, so that the country does not face what he calls “institutional anarchy.”

Other representatives of civil society in Kosovo have also called for the process to be completed within the constitutional deadline.

The Group for Legal and Political Studies (GLPS), in a public statement, said “party interests have surpassed the public interest by blocking the functioning of institutions and damaging citizens’ trust.”

“Today there is no longer any room for excuses, broad political interpretations or further postponements. There is only one clear obligation: to constitute the Assembly within the constitutional deadline. Any failure to fulfill this obligation would constitute a violation of the Constitution and an irresponsible political and institutional act,” GLPS said in its statement./REL

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Members of the Kosovo Assembly are expected to convene tonight to begin constituting the new legislature.

The news was disclosed exclusively to KosovaPress by sources within the Kosovo Assembly.

The constitutive session could begin at around 20:00 or 21:00. At this session, the Vetëvendosje Movement is expected to propose its candidate for speaker of the Assembly.

Meanwhile, VV leader Albin Kurti and LDK chairman Lumir Abdixhiku are meeting to discuss the possibility of reaching an agreement on the issue of the president.

Before meeting with Kurti, Abdixhiku said that the Assembly must be constituted today, stressing that the party he leads would not submit. Kurti, for his part, said there would be news as soon as an agreement was reached.

A day earlier, Kurti did not put forward a candidate for speaker of the Assembly, as he requested more time to negotiate a political agreement with the LDK.

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