Analysts: Kurti's government unsuccessful in foreign policy and economy in 2023

Political analysts assess for Front Online that Prime Minister Albin Kurti's government had many more failures than progress in 2023, and they note foreign policy, the economic sector, and lawmaking as areas where failure was noted.

Analyst Dritero Arifi mentions the imposition of sanctions on Kosovo by the European Union as one of the failures, stating that this government is unable to remove them.

"The biggest failures are in the economy, which failed to revive even hope. The Kosovo economy faces a weak rule of law and an informal economy. Another failure this year is the sanctions or measures imposed by the EU that the government failed to remove at least this year, and the reform of the judiciary has also failed because it has not reached the level of reform, so the successes are very limited," Arifi said to Front Online.

Arifi sees foreign policy as another failure.

"The government did not have the capacity to commit to new recognitions, and as limited progress, we can highlight the passage of the first phase for membership in the Council of Europe," Arifi said.

He sees the only progress in "taking control of the north."

"But precisely because of this progress, we have been damaged in many other aspects, but in any case, we can say that this is the biggest progress of Kurti's government, although even there, the job is not finished yet," he added.

Analyst Arton Demhasaj also states that Kurti's government has not made progress in 2023.

"Not only in 2023, but since the beginning of the mandate of this government, there has been no major shift in political, economic, or foreign policy. Foreign policy has stagnated in all aspects, so we have no recognition that is certainly achieved, and if we talk about the issue of membership in international organizations, there is no movement except for the applications we have submitted," Demhasaj said.

However, he assesses that progress has been made in the dialogue with Belgrade.

"In the dialogue, we can say that we have more or less progress; we have both the Brussels Agreement and the Ohrid Annex, but then it got stuck in implementation. Now we can say that we have made progress because we have the conversion of plates by Serbs in the northern municipalities and the decision of the Government of Serbia to recognize those plates," Demhasaj said.

Artan Muhaxheri believes that foreign policy in 2023 has completely stagnated, adding that Prime Minister Albin Kurti has spent most of his energy on the dialogue.

"Kosovo's foreign policy has completely stagnated because there is no vision, plans, or idea to improve Kosovo's international position. 2023 was very tough for the citizens of Kosovo because there was no essential economic and political development. The issue of dialogue dominated the whole year, and Prime Minister Kurti spent most of his political energy dealing with direct or indirect topics of the dialogue process," Muhaxheri said.

In his opinion, the Kosovo government had a partisan approach to laws, leading to numerous constitutional blockades because the adopted laws were not in line with the Constitution.

This year, the Government of Kosovo held 62 sessions, made 564 decisions, and drafted 78 laws.