Albulena Haxhiu

Albulena Haxhiu (born 11 May 1987 in Pristina) is a Kosovo jurist and a politician of the Vetëvendosje movement who serves as Speaker of the Assembly of Kosovo. She completed studies at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pristina and postgraduate work in criminal law at South East European University.

She entered the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo in its fourth legislature, sitting from 2011 to 2014, and was returned in later elections. As a deputy she chaired, for two terms, the committee responsible for legislation, mandates, immunities, the Assembly’s rules of procedure and oversight of the Anti-Corruption Agency. In January 2018 the Basic Court of Pristina found her guilty, with three other Vetëvendosje deputies, of using tear gas in the chamber in 2016 and of obstructing officials, and imposed a suspended sentence of one year and three months with a two-year probation period. The disruptions were aimed at blocking ratification of a border-demarcation agreement with Montenegro and of an agreement on an association of Serb-majority municipalities. She was appointed minister of justice in 2020 and named to the same post in the cabinet of Prime Minister Albin Kurti that the Assembly approved on 22 March 2021.

After the parliamentary election of 9 February 2025 she was put forward for speaker more than fifty times without obtaining a majority, and she then sat as a deputy speaker until early elections were scheduled for 28 December 2025. In those two 2025 elections she was the most-voted woman, with more than 125,000 votes in February and more than 174,000 in December. On 11 February 2026 the new Assembly elected her speaker by 66 votes to 44, with eight abstentions. She was the second woman to preside over the Assembly, after Vjosa Osmani, who had held the office in 2021. Vetëvendosje had taken 51.1 percent of the vote and 57 of the 120 seats.

Osmani’s term as president ended at midnight on 4 April 2026 with no successor chosen, and Haxhiu assumed the acting presidency that afternoon at a handover in Pristina. The constitution provides that an acting president may not serve longer than six months, and the Constitutional Court had set 28 April as the deadline for deputies to elect a president before a snap parliamentary election. She was re-elected speaker on 9 September 2026, with 62 votes in favour and 16 against. In the first minutes of 7 October 2026 the Assembly elected Justina Shiroka Pula president with 81 votes, one above the two-thirds majority of 80, under an agreement between Vetëvendosje and the Democratic Party of Kosovo that also changed the law governing the Kosovo Specialist Chambers. Pula took the oath the same day, ending the vacancy that Haxhiu had filled.

Early life and education

Family background

Albulena Haxhiu was born on 11 May 1987 in Pristina. Koha reported that she still lives in the city with her family. Those profiles do not name her parents or any school she attended before university.

She is married to Alban Krasniqi and is the mother of three children. On 24 February 2023, President Vjosa Osmani appointed Krasniqi to Kosovo's Central Election Commission for the remainder of a vacant term, on the proposal of the Vetëvendosje parliamentary group. Radio Free Europe has identified that commissioner as Haxhiu's husband.

In May 2025, Prime Minister Albin Kurti described her in public as the granddaughter of Ahmet Haxhiu, while arguing that other parties should not pick Vetëvendosje's nominee for speaker of the Assembly. At a party meeting he said Ahmet Haxhiu had been an activist of the Revolutionary Movement for the Unification of Albanians and one of the closest collaborators of Adem Demaçi. Kurti said that in 1991 Ahmet Haxhiu sent weapons to Drenica in support of the Kosovo Liberation Army, that Serbian authorities arrested him in 1993, and that he died on 6 July 1994 after severe torture. Haxhiu, born in 1987, was seven years old at that date.

A 2017 profile by Jakup Krasniqi, a former spokesman of the Kosovo Liberation Army, gives Ahmet Haxhiu's life as running from 6 May 1932, when Krasniqi says he was born in Pristina, to 6 July 1994. Krasniqi wrote that Ahmet Haxhiu was imprisoned five times, took part with Demaçi in the clandestine Revolutionary Movement for the Unification of Albanians, continued in the People's Movement for the Republic of Kosovo and the People's Movement of Kosovo, and contributed to the early organization and arming of the Kosovo Liberation Army. In that account, some of the weapons with which Adem Jashari later fought came from Ahmet Haxhiu. On 28 November 2012, President Atifete Jahjaga conferred on him the Order Hero of Kosovo, which the presidency describes as an honour for acts of sacrifice and bravery for Kosovo's freedom and independence.

Education

Koha reported that Haxhiu finished her studies at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pristina and then took postgraduate studies in criminal law at the South East European University. Radio Free Europe likewise reported studies at the University of Pristina's Faculty of Law and at the South East European University in criminal law, without a degree title or dates. The university lists a Faculty of Law and keeps campuses in Tetovo and Skopje, in North Macedonia; the Kosovo reports do not say at which campus she studied.

Parliamentary career and opposition activism

Election to the Assembly

In a June 2025 interview, Haxhiu said she joined Vetëvendosje in September 2010, completing a membership form in the Pejton district of Pristina in front of Glauk Konjufca, after her father urged her to formalize a role she had already taken in the movement’s protests.

The movement was still outside the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo and stood in a parliamentary election for the first time on 12 December 2010. Citing Central Election Commission results certified on 7 February 2011, the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations recorded 14 seats for Vetëvendosje, behind the Democratic Party of Kosovo with 34 and the Democratic League of Kosovo with 27. Zëri later reported that Haxhiu was 23 when she first became a deputy that year.

She sat in the legislature chosen on 8 June 2014. Balkan Insight, reporting her arrest the next year, identified her as a Vetëvendosje deputy and published a photograph of her from that campaign. In certified results reproduced by the European Union Election Observation Mission, Vetëvendosje received 99,397 votes, 13.59 percent, and 16 seats, third behind a Democratic Party-led coalition with 37 and the Democratic League with 30.

Voters returned her on 11 June 2017. Zëri, citing Periskopi, wrote that she had received more than 15,000 votes, was the second-most-voted woman on the Vetëvendosje list, and had been given another mandate. The EU mission’s certified results gave the party 200,135 votes, 27.49 percent, and 32 of 120 seats. Vetëvendosje, then led by Visar Ymeri, ran alone and put forward former leader Albin Kurti as its candidate for prime minister.

Committee work

By December 2015 Balkan Insight identified Haxhiu as chair of the Assembly’s Committee on Legislation. Earlier that year she was the authorized representative of a group of opposition deputies before the Constitutional Court of Kosovo. On 11 August 2015 she and 23 other deputies filed Referral KO107/15, challenging Decision No. 05-V-139 of 3 August 2015, by which the Assembly approved Amendment XXIV, the constitutional basis for the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and the Office of the Specialist Prosecutor.

The Assembly had failed to adopt the amendment on 26 June 2015, with 75 votes in favor, seven against and two abstentions; the government resubmitted it, and it passed on 3 August. The applicants argued that the text and the procedure conflicted with provisions on the state, equality, the courts, the Constitutional Court and the Ombudsperson, and that the chambers were not tied to Kosovo’s ordinary constitutional bodies. On 21 September 2015 the court unanimously declared the referral inadmissible as unsubstantiated. Zëri later wrote that she had repeatedly confronted Assembly speaker Kadri Veseli, who, the paper said, had seriously insulted her.

Tear-gas protests and court cases

On 8 October 2015 opposition deputies released tear gas inside the chamber. The BBC reported that the gas broke up the session and that two deputies fainted, amid whistles and insults. Opposition deputies argued that a government agreement with Serbia on an association of Serb-majority municipalities endangered Kosovo’s territorial integrity. The government called the protest, which it blamed on Kurti, beyond “the bounds of institutional and democratic behaviour.” Ramush Haradinaj, leader of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, warned of “even bigger actions than throwing tear gas.” The same campaign, joined by Vetëvendosje and the Alliance, was also aimed at blocking a border-demarcation agreement with Montenegro.

On 8 December 2015 police stopped Haxhiu as she drove in Pristina toward a Vetëvendosje meeting in Gjilan. Balkan Insight reported that she had been in hiding for weeks on a warrant accusing her of setting off tear gas, and that she was taken to the Palace of Justice. The same account said seven opposition deputies had by then been arrested: Kurti and Donika Kadaj had been remanded for 30 days, and Fisnik Ismaili, Haxhi Shala and Ismajl Kurteshi were under house arrest. The paper said the campaign targeted the agreements with Serbia and Montenegro, and in particular the planned Association of Serbian Municipalities, which the opposition said would give the Serb minority too much power. Faton Topalli, arrested that day inside the Assembly, wrote that Prime Minister Isa Mustafa was marking a year in office by detaining opposition deputies.

On 3 January 2018 the Basic Court in Pristina convicted Kurti, Kadaj-Bujupi, Haxhiu and Topalli of using tear gas in the chamber and of obstructing an official. None attended. Balkan Insight reported conditional sentences of 18 months for Kurti and Kadaj-Bujupi, 15 months for Haxhiu and 14 months for Topalli, each suspended for two years. It dated the gas to 2015 and said the protest concerned the Montenegro agreement, described as allegedly depriving Kosovo of territory, and the association of Serb-majority municipalities. Prishtina Insight placed the charged incidents in 2016 and wrote that the four called the trial “political” and said they had defended Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

On 18 September 2018 the Court of Appeals confirmed that judgment and rejected the prosecution’s appeal, spokesman Arbër Jashari told Klan Kosova. Haxhiu’s merged sentence was one year and three months — one year and two months for using a weapon and four months for obstructing an official — conditional for two years. Kurti and Kadaj-Bujupi received one year and six months each, and Topalli one year and two months.

Minister of Justice

Terms in the Kurti governments

Albulena Haxhiu first held the justice portfolio in the first cabinet of Albin Kurti. On 3 February 2020 the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo voted 66 in favour, with 10 abstentions, for a coalition of Vetëvendosje and the Democratic League of Kosovo. Vetëvendosje nominated her to Justice; five of 15 ministers were women, a rise women's groups welcomed without calling it parity. At the cabinet's second meeting she backed repeal of two decisions of the government of Ramush Haradinaj, a near-doubling of ministerial salaries and post-mandate ministerial pay.

On 25 March 2020 an LDK no-confidence motion passed 82 to 34, with one abstention, after Kurti dismissed the LDK interior minister during the early coronavirus outbreak. On 3 June 2020 deputies confirmed a cabinet under the LDK's Avdullah Hoti, and the first term ended.

She returned when the Assembly approved Kurti's second government on 22 March 2021, by 67 votes to 30, after the 14 February election. N1 reported 15 ministers and three deputy prime ministers, with Haxhiu again at Justice. A re-evaluation of judges and prosecutors, which Kurti had raised in 2020 by forming a working group, was revived as a central pledge. She was still identified with the office through the deadlock after the February 2025 election. On 26 August 2025, when the Assembly elected her a deputy speaker, Balkan Insight described her as a former justice minister in that cabinet.

Domestic violence and criminal-code reform

In October 2022 the government approved draft changes to the criminal code and the code of criminal procedure on rape, sexual assault and domestic violence. Kurti said ministers could not replace judges and prosecutors but could write rules so that they "react and act more quickly," citing killings of women and the rape of an 11-year-old girl by five adults. Haxhiu said courts would publish those verdicts and that the Kosovo Judicial Council would keep a public register of names of people convicted of rape, sexual assault or domestic violence. The drafts also proposed bans of three to ten years on public candidacy, a public-employment ban after a rape conviction, a prohibition on virginity testing, investigations finished within a year, and trials within 60 or 90 days.

The Assembly adopted the code amendments on 26 October 2023. The OSCE Mission in Kosovo recorded bans on standing for office, public employment, public auctions, applying as a strategic investor, and, for professional drivers, driving. In September 2023 the Assembly also passed a Law on Prevention and Protection from Domestic Violence, Violence against Women and Gender-based Violence, described by the OSCE as aimed at the Istanbul Convention, which is directly applicable under the constitution. Court practice remained far below the existing maximum, a fine and up to three years. In nine domestic-violence sentences from 141 cases monitored in 2023, imprisonment was imposed in 22 percent, with an average effective term of just over five months. The mission warned that suspended sentences and fines risked deterring complaints, and cited counts of at least 55 women killed by a partner or relative from 2010 to 2023.

War-crimes documentation

A Ministry of Justice institute created in 2011 to archive crimes of the 1998–99 war was abolished in 2018 on Haradinaj's order, after criticism that it had missed its mandate. In July 2023 the Assembly adopted, on second reading, a law for a new Institute for Crimes Committed During the War, placed under the prime minister rather than the justice ministry. Haxhiu said this was the first such body in that form and that it would document war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. She said bylaws, a director and staff would follow within months unless the law went to the Constitutional Court of Kosovo. She called a Democratic Party of Kosovo claim that the government had defined the war as lasting until December 2000 a misrepresentation: the war period, she said, ran from January 1998 to 20 June 1999, with a power to examine connected crimes outside it.

PDK deputy Blerta Deliu-Codra said competence through 31 December 2000 was unacceptable because the war ended in June 1999, and that the extra period would help Serbia blame later violence on the Kosovo Liberation Army. The party considered a constitutional challenge. Bekim Blakaj, director of the Kosovo Humanitarian Law Fund, said the demand that the institute sit outside political control had been rejected: the prime minister appoints the director and can dismiss or extend that mandate, leaving what he called an instrument of the government. He said a late change let the institute examine crimes after 20 June 1999, but not past 31 December 2000.

It opened under Atdhe Hetemi, who told BIRN in January 2024 that a statute and a separate budget set it apart from the body closed in 2018, while conceding that evidence and witnesses had already been lost. He confirmed research through December 2000, described killings after the June 1999 withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serbian forces as individual revenge rather than organised crime, and said crimes against other communities would not be ignored. He did not separate the archive from Kurti's revived idea of a genocide case against Serbia, which specialists have called very difficult. The register he treated as the main existing count, the Belgrade Humanitarian Law Center's Kosovo Memory Book, records more than 13,500 people killed or disappeared from January 1998 to December 2000.

Judicial vetting

The second government's principal justice project was an extraordinary re-evaluation, or vetting, of judges and prosecutors. On 25 October 2021 Haxhiu asked the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe body that advises on constitutional matters, to review a concept paper, and she later added draft constitutional amendments.

Balkan Insight reported in November 2021 that a plan to vet every judge and prosecutor was already meeting resistance, "not least from the European Union." Opinion CDL-AD(2022)011, adopted on 17–18 June 2022, agreed that reform was needed but not that a one-off vetting of every judge and prosecutor, through ad hoc bodies, had been justified when much of the problem was poor use of existing law. The draft amendments, it wrote, "go too far." Constitutional integrity checks should be limited to council members, court presidents and chief prosecutors, with other changes made by ordinary law and designed with the councils and civil society.

On 4 September 2022 Kurti and Haxhiu gave Speaker Glauk Konjufca the file. Haxhiu said it followed the Venice Commission and would keep only those who could justify their wealth. She tied it to impunity, saying that because of judicial inaction "women are being killed, minors are being sexually abused and major corruption remains unpunished." As reported, the plan still covered every judge except those of the Constitutional Court, in three phases over five years, starting with the councils, five Supreme Court judges and the chief state prosecutor.

No such vetting started. The Speaker sent the draft amendments to the Constitutional Court on 2 March 2023. In January 2024 the court found, with one exception, that they did not infringe Chapter II rights. The Kosovo Law Institute wrote in December 2024 that the amendments were never adopted and that vetting "never even began," including the narrower check of senior officials. It also said the ministry had not finished laws promised in a March 2023 joint commitment with the councils, the Supreme Court and the state prosecutor, and that bills on unjustified assets and the prosecutorial council were weakly consulted and repeatedly struck down. On this record, it judged the 2021 reform promise to have left vetting "in the status quo."

The European Commission's 2024 Kosovo report described the same stall. Delays under the March 2023 commitment showed, it said, "a recurring lack of willingness to strengthen the justice system." Consultations were rushed and, despite EU advice, the package was not sent to the Venice Commission, which hurt its quality. Integrity checks for senior judges and prosecutors were still pending because the amendments lacked the majority the constitution requires.

Speaker of the Assembly

Failed candidacies in 2025

The 9 February 2025 election left Vetëvendosje with 48 of 120 seats in the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo, the largest group but short of the 61 votes needed to elect a speaker. The constitutive session opened on 15 April and stuck on that vote. Vetëvendosje, led by outgoing prime minister Albin Kurti, nominated outgoing justice minister Albulena Haxhiu. By the fourth sitting she had already been put forward three times, each time with 57 votes.

The Democratic League of Kosovo said it would not back a Vetëvendosje nominee without an agreement, and later that it wanted no deal at all. The Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) said it would support a Vetëvendosje candidate only if that person had not served in the cabinet. From 1 May, Vetëvendosje sought a commission for a secret ballot; other parties refused to join.

The Constitutional Court of Kosovo intervened twice. On 26 June it held that the April session was unfinished until a speaker and deputy speakers were elected, and ordered deputies to finish within 30 days. Haxhiu said she would withdraw if a secret ballot failed to reach 61. On 8 August it allowed another 30 days, required an open vote and capped any candidate at three nominations. It found acting chair Avni Dehari had violated the constitution by pressing for a secret-ballot commission, and recorded 54 failed attempts since 15 April.

On 20 August Haxhiu received 57 votes, with 56 against and three abstentions. Foreign minister Donika Gërvalla-Schwarz, nominated immediately afterward, received the same result; Arbërie Nagavci and Hekuran Murati also fell short. On 26 August, after 57 interrupted sessions, Dimal Basha — the fifth nominee, and not a minister in the outgoing cabinet — was elected with 73 votes in favour, 30 against and eight abstentions, including most PDK deputies. Haxhiu became a deputy speaker, with Vlora Çitaku (PDK), Kujtim Shala (LDK) and Emilija Redžepi for the non-Serb minorities. The Assembly was still not fully constituted: Serb List candidate Slavko Simić failed three rounds for the reserved Serb deputy speakership, and Basha refused a fourth under the three-nomination rule.

Election in February 2026

A snap election in December 2025 gave Vetëvendosje 51.1 percent of the vote and 57 seats, ahead of the PDK on 20.2 percent, the LDK on 13.2 percent and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo on 5.5 percent. On 11 February 2026 the new Assembly elected Haxhiu speaker by 66 votes to 44, with eight abstentions, and chose five deputy speakers the same day. She was the second woman to hold the post in Kosovo’s 25 years of pluralist politics, after Vjosa Osmani in 2021.

She said the office meant serving “the republic, democratic order and public trust.” LDK deputy Armend Zemaj said his party would not vote without a prior agreement. That evening the Assembly elected Kurti prime minister by 66 votes to 49; neither he nor Glauk Konjufca had been able to form a cabinet the previous year.

The majority did not reach the presidency, which needs 80 votes in the first rounds and, under a 2014 ruling, 80 deputies present. On 5 March only 66 deputies attended after an opposition boycott. Vetëvendosje had proposed Konjufca and, because more than one name is required, Fatmire Haxha Kollcaku, and had not nominated Osmani again. Haxhiu asked the Constitutional Court to review the procedure and suspend the deadline. Osmani dissolved the Assembly on 6 March. On 25 March the court held unanimously that the decree had “no legal effect” and gave deputies 34 further days; failure would dissolve the Assembly automatically, with an election within 45 days. Osmani’s term was due to end in April, and in a vacancy the speaker serves as acting head of state.

Re-election after the June 2026 election

Failure to elect a president produced another snap election on 7 June 2026. Vetëvendosje won 53 seats, four fewer than in December, the PDK 22 and the LDK 18. Results were certified on 8 July, and the PDK said the court had allowed 30 days from certification to elect the leadership. On 6 August Kurti asked for time before naming a speaker so presidential talks could continue. PDK leader Bedri Hamza called that a continuation of the blockade. A session on 8 August, the day after the deadline, lasted minutes: Dehari presided, and Vetëvendosje still named nobody.

The sitting resumed on 9 September after Kurti and LDK leader Lumir Abdixhiku agreed to propose former Constitutional Court judge Bekim Sejdiu for president — a deal six LDK deputies said they would oppose. With Dehari in the chair, deputies re-elected Haxhiu by 62 votes to 16. Beforehand, PDK deputies laid a Kosovo Liberation Army emblem on the floor under the slogan “the KLA unites us,” tying the session to Specialist Chambers cases against former KLA leaders.

A speaker alone does not inaugurate the legislature; all five deputies are required. On 11 September Ardian Gola of Vetëvendosje was elected a deputy, but Vlora Çitaku of the PDK received 44 votes, short of 61. PDK deputies walked out, and Hamza said the party would go to the Constitutional Court. Nagavci, leading Vetëvendosje’s group, said its 53 deputies would not back candidates opposed to the Sejdiu agreement; both Çitaku and Shala had said they were. The party said it could call on 62 deputies for a government, but a president still had to be chosen within two months of inauguration or another election would follow.

Acting President of Kosovo

Constitutional succession

The five-year term of Vjosa Osmani as president of Kosovo ended on 4 April 2026. Article 86 requires the Assembly to elect a president by secret ballot no later than 30 days before that expiry, by two-thirds of all deputies on the first two ballots. On 5 March opposition deputies boycotted a sitting after Vetëvendosje, Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s party, nominated Foreign Minister Glauk Konjufca and deputy Fatmire Mulhaxha Kollçaku instead of a consensus candidate. No ballot was held. Osmani dissolved the Assembly by decree the next day. On 25 March the Constitutional Court, in KO72/26 and KO74/26, held unanimously that Decree No. 24/2026 had no legal effect. The Assembly had been constituted only on 11 February, so it had lacked the 60 days Article 82 allows before a failure to elect a president dissolves it. The court gave deputies until 28 April; failure would dissolve the Assembly by force of the constitution and require an election within 45 days.

Article 90, the only clause that creates an acting president, covers temporary inability, not the end of a mandate. A president may transfer the duties by an order stating the reason and, if known, the duration, or the Assembly may, by two-thirds of all deputies and after a medical consultation, find the president unable to serve. The speaker then acts until the president resumes. Paragraph 3 says the acting office “may not be exercised for a period longer than six (6) months.” Articles 86 and 82, not Article 90, govern an election deadline and dissolution when a term simply expires. In April 2026 institutions nonetheless treated the speaker as acting president for at most six months.

On the afternoon of 4 April, at a handover in which Osmani gave her the constitution, Speaker Albulena Haxhiu accepted the duties. She said the constitution placed the speaker in the office, that it could not be held for more than six months, and that parliamentary groups should set differences aside and elect a president quickly. Until they did, she said, she would exercise the responsibilities “with responsibility and high professionalism.”

Snap election and the six-month limit

No president had been elected by 28 April. Citing the March judgment, Haxhiu treated the Assembly as dissolved. After meeting Kreshnik Radoniqi, chairman of the Central Election Commission, and party representatives, she set an early election for 7 June, the third parliamentary election in about 16 months.

With nearly all ballots counted, Vetëvendosje had 42.94 percent, the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) 21.14 percent, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) 17.57 percent and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo 7.16 percent. Turnout was about 37 percent, well below December 2025, when Vetëvendosje had won 51.1 percent and 57 seats. June left Vetëvendosje with 53 seats, the PDK with 22 and the LDK with 18. Osmani headed the LDK list, again sought the presidency, and attributed the low turnout to fatigue with repeated crises.

The new Assembly still had no president. A 30-day limit for constituting it expired on 7 August, and the last sitting before a long pause was on 8 August. On 18 August the PDK, the LDK and the Alliance refused Haxhiu’s invitation to party leaders. Lumir Abdixhiku of the LDK said her acting role had ended when the new Assembly’s proceedings began and could resume only if she were re-elected speaker; otherwise she was “only an MP.” She was re-elected on 9 September, with 62 votes in favour, 16 against and 13 abstentions. Vetëvendosje deputy Adnan Rrustemi argued that the acting presidency follows the speakership, so re-election opened a new six months. Vullnet Bugaqku of the Kosovo Democratic Institute disagreed: Article 90.3, he said, ended her authority on 4 October, and a later decree would be open to challenge. Ehat Miftaraj, executive director of the Kosovo Law Institute, said the cap limits the office rather than the person and cannot be restarted by re-electing the speaker.

A second deadline did not match that date. On 23 September the Constitutional Court held that the 60 days for a presidential election had run from 8 August and would expire on 6 October, after which another parliamentary election would be due within 45 days. It treated the Assembly as inaugurated, refused to annul Kurti’s re-election as prime minister—62 votes in favour, and eight from the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista against, in a boycotted sitting—and ordered election of the remaining deputy speaker. Counted from 4 April, the six-month acting period was reported as ending on 4 October. On 5 October the presidency, which still described Haxhiu as acting president, asked the court, under the clause it identified as Article 113, paragraph 3, subparagraph 1, whether she could continue and who could call an election if the Assembly dissolved. The court had not ruled when deputies voted.

Election of Justina Shiroka Pula

In a session crossing midnight on 6 October, the Assembly elected Justina Shiroka Pula, avoiding dissolution and a fourth parliamentary election in less than two years. The secret ballot opened minutes before the deadline. She received 81 votes, one above the two-thirds of all deputies required on a first ballot, and two ballots were invalid. The result was announced in the first minutes of 7 October, and she then took the oath. Article 87 starts the term with that oath, which ended Haxhiu’s acting tenure.

Pula, a 73-year-old economist born in Pristina, had in December 2025 become the first woman to head the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts. She was minister of energy and mining from 2008 to 2011 under Hashim Thaçi, and a PDK deputy from 2011 to 2014. Kurti proposed her late on 6 October after earlier names failed, including an August understanding with the LDK on former judge Bekim Sejdiu, who withdrew on 14 September. PDK leader Bedri Hamza accepted her and nominated Eliza Hoxha against her. She was the third woman in the office, after Atifete Jahjaga and Osmani.

The majority was tied to legislation on the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, the Hague court for former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders. On 16 September it sentenced Thaçi and Jakup Krasniqi to 25 years, Kadri Veseli to 18 and Rexhep Selimi to 13 for war crimes. The PDK and the Alliance wanted those amendments passed on a second reading first; Kurti agreed that night. Adopted with 88 votes, the amendments capped sentences at 15 years, required them to be served in Kosovo, opened the way to pardons, and narrowed the court’s time period and subject matter. Commentators noted Kosovo’s international commitments and the chance of constitutional review; a law also binds only after the president promulgates it. Protests in Pristina over the verdicts turned violent on 5 October. Because counting finished after midnight, Radio Free Europe reported that the presidential vote might be challenged. None had been announced immediately.

Political positions

Party roles and women’s organization

Inside Vetëvendosje, Haxhiu has held party office alongside government posts she has used to press gender-equality policy. On 25 September 2022, in the movement’s first direct vote for Gratë për Vetëvendosje (Women for Self-Determination), members chose her chair with 94.55 percent in favour, on the same day Albin Kurti was returned as leader. The next month the General Council installed a four-year presidency, and she sat on it automatically as chair of the women’s organization.

She had already described representation as an institutional failure. In 2019, after entering the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo through the gender quota in 2010, she said the Assembly was not enforcing the Law on Gender Equality, whose benchmark is 50 percent for each gender, and noted an all-male team named to negotiate with Serbia.

As minister of justice she received a matching brief. On 7 November 2023 Kurti appointed her national coordinator against domestic violence, violence against women and gender-based violence, citing a 2022–2026 strategy, criminalization of violence against women and free legal aid. She has located the remaining failure in sentencing. After a second killing of a woman by a partner within a week in April 2024, she wrote that “violators have often become murderers precisely because of the lack of adequate punishment.” Coverage of the killings noted an August 2023 Amnesty International finding of weak protection, and only seven safe houses in Kosovo. At the FemArt festival that September she said the government wanted a specific law on femicide, then not a distinct offence, and that higher courts too often overturned convictions, criticism for which she said she had been accused of interfering with the judiciary; the ministry counted 29 women killed in five years.

Dialogue with Serbia

On the Belgrade–Pristina dialogue, Haxhiu has argued that Pristina should deal with Kosovo Serbs as its own citizens, and that normalization with Serbia is unavailable while Belgrade has not accounted for the 1998–99 war. On the third anniversary of the 2013 agreement she said there could be no normalization “with a state which has not apologized for the genocide it committed,” and that the Serb List was directed from Belgrade. Kosovo, she said, needed a dialogue with its Serbs and not with Serbia.

She has treated the Community of Serb Municipalities in the 2013 Brussels Agreement, initialled by Hashim Thaçi and Ivica Dačić, as the dialogue’s central mistake. In June 2023 she wrote that the title spoke of normalization while the substance was a mono-ethnic association—the first six of fifteen articles—and that its character, delegated executive powers and a proposed “third layer” of government were later found unconstitutional. On 23 December 2015 the Constitutional Court of Kosovo held that such an association was lawful but could not exercise executive powers reserved to the central authorities. She called it a “bad legacy” whose remedy was a newer agreement centered on de facto mutual recognition.

In office she has drawn that line rather than rejecting every form of municipal cooperation. In October 2023 she said mediators were one-sided in pressing an association “as Serbia wants it,” and that Kurti would not sign executive competencies or anything contrary to sovereignty. The next month she said a draft statute created neither autonomy for Serbs nor “another state within our state.” In May 2023 Kurti rejected a European Union draft statute as the desire for a Republika Srpska inside Kosovo.

A further commitment is an interstate genocide case, which Kurti put before the International Court of Justice in his 2021 program. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said Kosovo, not a United Nations member, could not file except through another state, and called the talk a threat; Ehat Miftaraj of the Kosovo Law Institute told Deutsche Welle that Kosovo lacked capacity for an admissible case and that a step without the United States and the EU risked a counter-effect. Nataša Kandić of the Humanitarian Law Center said the court would not find genocide, and would not back “a political idea which doesn’t contribute to the rule of law and justice for victims,” while still documenting civilian killings and impunity. In November 2023 Haxhiu said the indictment remained in the program and that Kurti, Vjosa Osmani and Glauk Konjufca were working on it, without details—preparation, not a filing.

In August 2025 she called the missing “an open wound and one of the greatest post-war challenges,” and named Serbia’s refusal to open archives as the main obstacle.

Reception and legal disputes

Opposition criticism

As minister of justice, Haxhiu was criticised over the death of Astrit Dehari and over comments on the courts in Kosovo. Dehari, a Vetëvendosje activist, died on 5 November 2016 in a detention cell in Prizren while held on terrorism charges. Prosecutors called it suicide; his family and the party disagreed. In October 2022 she said a report to prosecutors indicated that footage of the death had been removed and seen by ministry officials before the police. On 8 December 2022 she announced that samples had vanished from the Institute of Forensic Medicine's toxicology laboratory, which is under the ministry. Of 15 blood tubes, one urine tube and one stomach-contents tube, she said two blood samples had gone to Switzerland and one to the police, so 12 blood tubes and the other samples were missing. Only three people held keys. She called the loss, found during a move between refrigerators, a grave act meant to damage the investigation.

The Democratic Party of Kosovo and the Democratic League of Kosovo demanded her resignation. PDK's Përparim Gruda said the loss was her responsibility and harmed the evidence, accused Albin Kurti's government of controlling the institute through an acting director, and suspected her of manipulating proof after failing to clarify a death he said Vetëvendosje had used politically. LDK deputy Shkëmb Manaj called it a "superscandal" and said Kurti should dismiss her that day if she did not resign, or share the responsibility. She refused. On 10 January 2023 she said she had been barred from the evidence room, that the case had been used to strike at her, and that resigning would please those who did not want it clarified.

Monitors also treated her remarks as pressure on judicial independence. A December 2023 Kosovo Law Institute report cited a Facebook message asking whom the Special Prosecution worked for; a claim that a "patriarchal mentality" led the system to neglect domestic violence cases; and, after the Constitutional Court of Kosovo annulled the prosecutorial-council law, her statement that the court favoured council members' interests and had become an ally of the opposition. The institute said such comments conflicted with the separation of powers and with Council of Europe and Venice Commission cautions against criticism that could affect independence or the presumption of innocence. The European Commission's 2024 report did not name her, but said officials tended to criticise individual decisions or target particular judges and prosecutors. On 4 October 2023 she answered that comments on court decisions "clearly do not represent interference" and were not calls to judges or prosecutors about files.

Complaints and institutional conflicts

On 13 July 2023 a fight broke out in the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo during a Kurti speech on the Serb-majority north, after publication of recordings in which a Vetëvendosje parliamentary leader discussed Milan Radoičić. PDK deputies put a photomontage of Kurti on the podium; after Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi removed it, Mergim Lushtaku threw water at Kurti and Bislimi, then collided with Haxhiu, and others joined until Speaker Glauk Konjufca called the police.

LDK leader Arben Gashi said the clash escalated when ministers attacked a deputy. United States ambassador Jeffrey Hovenier wrote that violence was never an acceptable way to disagree. Haxhiu, who had been between the groups trying to separate them, said the attacks had "also manifested in punches toward the ministers," and that "such people desperately throw punches, since the same people are facing and will face the law, for all the crimes and the corruption and also their illegal enrichment."

In 2025 she accused Constitutional Court judge Radomir Laban of links to Serbia. After President Vjosa Osmani withdrew a request once he was named reporting judge, citing security reports from 2018, 2021 and 2024, Haxhiu called him a suspected "collaborator of the Serbian secret service BIA." The court said he had been appointed in 2018 after "all constitutional and legal procedures." On 11 September 2025 Special Prosecution spokesperson Arbnora Luta said no case concerning him was registered.

As acting president, Haxhiu nominated Vlora Spanca on 2 September 2026 for another term as auditor general, and the Assembly re-elected Spanca with 62 votes. Alliance for the Future of Kosovo deputy Burim Ramadani said Article 4 of the Law on the Auditor General required an open competition and an interview by an independent commission, and that the nomination abused official position. Haxhiu refused to withdraw the name and told him to go to the prosecution. On 6 October 2026 he filed a criminal complaint for abuse of official position.