Pristina: Opposition Demands Repeal of Citizenship Article
Kosovo's DPK and AAK want Article 31 of the citizenship law, which recognizes rights Serbs held since 1998, scrapped. The government offers a constitutional amendment if the Serb List backs it.
Opposition parties in Kosovo, the Democratic Party of Kosovo (DPK) and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK), demanded on August 30 and 31 that Article 31 of the citizenship law be amended or scrapped altogether, arguing that the provision poses a security risk because it lets Serbs who lived in Kosovo before 1998 obtain Kosovo citizenship. The ruling Vetevendosje party counters that the right has existed since the 2008 constitution and says it is willing to see it removed, but only if the opposition can secure the Serb List’s votes for the constitutional change.
The demand comes as Kosovo’s Assembly, elected in the February elections, still has not been constituted, with DPK and AAK lawmakers showing up at the parliament chamber every other day only to find the session cannot start. On Sunday, August 31, at around 8:48 a.m., lawmakers from both parties again blocked the entrance to the government building in Pristina, this time joined by DPK councilors, directors and activists from the municipalities of Srbica and Istok, demanding that the constitutive session finally be scheduled.
What the disputed article actually says
The contested Article 31 of the new law grants citizenship rights to citizens of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia who were permanent residents of Kosovo on January 1, 1998, as well as their direct descendants, regardless of where they live today or what citizenship they hold. The law passed its second reading in the Assembly on April 23 with 69 votes in favor and two against, with no abstentions, and took effect on May 22.
DPK lawmaker Ganimete Musljiu told the Ekonomia Online portal the provision is “harmful to Kosovo” and called for people who obtained citizenship since April to go through the process again, or have it annulled. Musljiu claims a large number of Serbs are being granted Kosovo citizenship every day, though no publicly available data has been released on either the number of approved applications or the ethnic makeup of the applicants.
AAK lawmaker Time Kadrijaj went further, challenging how the law was passed in the first place, saying the opposition was outside the assembly chamber when the vote took place. “They basically smuggled this law through,” Kadrijaj said, adding that her party checked with the European Union, the Quint countries and the United States whether introducing the provision had been their request, and the answer was no.
Government: the provision is nothing new
First Deputy Interior Minister Enver Dugoli dismissed the opposition’s complaints, calling them “artificially stirred up concerns.” Dugoli pointed out that the same provision existed in the earlier citizenship law from 2013, as well as in the 2008 law, and said the real novelty in the current text is not the disputed article but easier reacquisition of citizenship for the diaspora and a new pathway for ethnic Albanians from the Presevo Valley who have lived in Kosovo for years.
The right DPK and AAK are objecting to, in other words, was not introduced by the 2026 law. The same right is written into Article 155 of Kosovo’s constitution, in force since it was adopted in 2008 and moved in 2012, through Amendment 16, from the transitional provisions into Chapter I, the constitution’s basic provisions. Repealing it would therefore require a two-thirds majority of all lawmakers, including two-thirds of the lawmakers holding guaranteed seats for non-majority communities, a threshold that is not reachable without the Serb List’s support.
That is where the dispute takes its strangest turn: despite the sharp rhetoric on both sides, the government and the opposition converge on one point. Dugoli said Vetevendosje is willing to see the provision removed from the constitution as well, provided the opposition first secures the Serb List’s votes for the constitutional amendment, a condition that for now exists neither on paper nor in the corridors of the Assembly.
A warning pointing the other way
While the opposition warns the provision makes it easier for Serbs to obtain citizenship, the organization CASA raised the opposite concern in its own analysis of the law: that the new restrictions could “disproportionately and negatively affect Kosovo Serbs and other non-majority communities,” due to difficulties with civil registration, displacement and reliance on documentation from the Serbian system. According to the organization’s latest monitoring, around four thousand Serbs in Kosovo still lack Kosovo documents.
Former Interior Minister Dzeljalj Sveclja, who has since resigned, said in May that hundreds of applications from Serbian citizens for Kosovo citizenship had been received, but even then no figures were released on how many were approved or what their ethnic breakdown looked like. Neither in May nor now has the opposition backed up its own claims with numbers.
As DPK and AAK lawmakers keep gathering outside the government building day after day, the question of when Kosovo’s Assembly, elected back in February, will finally be constituted remains open, and with it the fate of Article 31.
