Just five months after Srpska Lista (The Serb List) reassumed administrative and executive control over the municipality of North Mitrovica, the local government has initiated a wave of controversial employee terminations targeting ethnic Albanian municipal workers.
Impacted personnel have been purged from various municipal sectors, including the Office for Communities, public sports facilities, and localized public health institutions. While the local administration officially attributes the dismissals to poor job performance or a failure to meet structural civil service criteria, local lawmakers and civil rights watchdogs argue the moves are politically and ethnically motivated, violating Kosovo’s employment laws.
1. The Language Barrier and Systemic Pretexts
Local officials highlight that the administrative justifications given to dismissed Albanian employees often lean on arbitrary standards, such as language proficiency, which are not legally mandated under the dual-language framework of Kosovo’s civil service guidelines.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ NORTH MITROVICA MUNICIPAL TERMINATION WAVE │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ • Targeted Sectors: Office for Communities, municipal sports arenas, │
│ and regional primary healthcare clinics. │
│ │
│ • Official Pretext: Failure to meet job "performance standards" or │
│ lack of necessary structural criteria. │
│ │
│ • De Facto Reality: Exploitation of language barriers; systematic │
│ replacement of Albanian staff following Srpska Lista's return. │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Emin Azemi, a North Mitrovica municipal assemblyman representing the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), spoke out against the operational double standards being weaponized inside the town hall.
Emin Azemi (PDK Assemblyman):
“The justification from their side is always that the employee did not perform their duties properly or did not meet the criteria. I am an Albanian; 90 percent of the workers there are Serbs. I do not know Serbian, and they do not know Albanian. Is this a legitimate condition or just a created barrier? Knowing the Serbian language is absolutely not a legal requirement for these positions.”
Azemi urged all affected civil servants who feel pressured, threatened, or unlawfully terminated to immediately file formal criminal complaints and pursue prosecution against any municipal manager exercising illegal administrative duress.
2. Legal Pushback and the Role of the Independent Oversight Board
Despite the ongoing purge, legal mechanisms within Kosovo’s broader administrative framework are actively interceding to reverse some of the local government’s decisions.
Aida Ferati-Doli, the Deputy Chairperson of the North Mitrovica Municipal Assembly, confirmed that multiple terminated workers have successfully won appeals to reclaim their positions. She cited a specific instance at the Kodra e Minatorëve (Miners’ Hill) medical clinic, where an ethnic Albanian nurse was abruptly fired after six months on the job under the guise of “poor performance.”
Ferati-Doli noted that the Independent Oversight Board for the Civil Service of Kosovo has consistently ruled in favor of the dismissed workers, ordering their reinstatement because the municipal executive systematically violated state labor laws during the firing process.
3. Electoral Engineering Ahead of June 7 Ballots
The targeted terminations are not isolated to North Mitrovica. Similar purges of ethnic Albanian municipal staff were documented in January 2026 within the neighboring northern municipality of Zvečan, immediately following a shift back to a Serb-led local leadership.
| Municipality | Timeline of Purges | Sectors Targeted | Political Context |
| Zvečan | January 2026 | Administrative & Local Utility Positions | Followed the collapse of provisional administrative structures. |
| North Mitrovica | May 2026 | Communities Office, Healthcare, Sports Infrastructure | Occurring during the final stretch of the general election campaign. |
Former Deputy Chairperson of the North Mitrovica Assembly, Skënder Sadiku, linked the current wave of dismissals directly to the highly charged atmosphere ahead of Kosovo’s June 7, 2026, general elections.
Sadiku warned that political parties in the north are using employment security as a tool for electoral engineering and intimidation. He issued an urgent appeal to regional political actors to respect the dignity of local citizens, preserve multi-ethnic workspaces, and directed all victims of employment discrimination to bypass local political channels and go straight to state law enforcement and the judiciary.
