Voter turnout in municipal elections held in northern Kosovo reached 3.4 percent, the Kosovo Central Electoral Commission said. Similar data is provided by the Serbian government on Kosovo. The head of the office, Petar Petkovic, said that out of 45,095 registered voters, 1,566 were Albanians and only 13 were ethnic Serbs. “Albin Kurti (former prime minister of Kosovo) and all those who have been calling for elections in northern Kosovo for months have failed, and the real winner is the Serbian people who boycotted these elections. It is also a defeat for that part of the international community that supported Kurti in organizing the elections,” Petar Petkovic said at a press conference. He emphasized that “mass abstinence is a sign of the unity of the Serbs, as well as their determination not to take a single step towards normalizing relations with Pristina, unless the Union of Serbian Municipalities is created.”

Polling stations in northern Kosovo closed at 19:00 local time (20:00 Greek time) and there were no problems during the electoral process.

Municipal elections in northern Kosovo were held in the Serb-majority municipalities of North Mitrovica, Leposavić, Zvecan and Zubin Potok. In these municipalities, in November 2022, during the license plate crisis, all Serbs withdrew from local government. Serbian parties, at the insistence and support of Belgrade, decided not to participate in the elections. The Kosovo Serbs are asking Pristina to first fulfill the commitments it made in 2013 under the Brussels Agreement to establish the Union of Serbian Municipalities, and then to hold elections.

Source: RES-IPE