The passage of the law in the Assembly does not close the issue. On the contrary, after the vote, fundamental questions have emerged about Kosovo’s legal sovereignty, the limits of the mandate of the Specialist Chambers and the role the country’s highest institutions are expected to play in a possible legal clash.
The debate moves from politics to the legal order
The approved changes are being read as a concrete test of Kosovo’s ability to define the legal order of its own institutions, within constitutional limits and international obligations.
At its core, the issue is not seen simply as a technical amendment. It affects the relationship between state sovereignty and a judicial mechanism with a special mandate, built outside the ordinary institutional system.
What the constitutional basis provides
Kosovo’s Constitution, through Article 162 and Amendment 24, sets out the basis for the Specialist Chambers and the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office. For this very reason, any intervention in the relevant law is expected to be judged in direct relation to the Constitution, jurisdiction and the guarantees of due process.
According to the interpretation supporting the change, the Specialist Constitutional Chamber would have limited jurisdiction over matters related to its decisions, orders and judgments, while the constitutionality of the law itself would fall to Kosovo’s Constitutional Court in Prishtina.
The Chambers’ reaction and the lack of consultation
After the law was passed, the Specialist Chambers said they had not been consulted on the changes and that at that moment they had no comment. This detail makes even more visible the distance between political decision-making in Prishtina and the mechanism that continues to exercise its mandate.
According to the Chambers’ official version, they continue to fulfill their mandate by guaranteeing fair procedures and protection for witnesses and victims. But this is precisely where the core of the debate lies: how much real room does the state of Kosovo have to impose by law the limits of this mechanism?
The institutional weight of the new President
A particular context is also given to this issue by the fact that Justina Shiroka-Pula, elected President of the Republic of Kosovo on October 6, 2026, until recently headed the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts.
On September 26, in her capacity as head of the Academy, she had reacted publicly after the judgment against four former KLA leaders, calling for reflection not only on the decision, but also on the nature, mandate and functioning of the Specialist Chambers. That position emphasized the need for equal, comprehensive and impartial justice, as well as avoiding the perception of selective justice.
This previous positioning does not automatically determine the decisions the President may take now, but it places her at the center of a moment of high institutional and constitutional weight.
The real test begins after the vote
The real debate is not only whether the Assembly has passed a law, but whether this law will produce legal effect in the face of a mechanism operating under a special mandate. It is precisely there that the strength of Kosovo’s institutions will be tested against a complex legal architecture.
If a clash arises between the interpretation of Kosovo’s institutions and the position of the Specialist Chambers, the battle will move to the competent bodies. And there it will be seen whether legal sovereignty remains a political formula, or turns into a standard that imposes concrete consequences.
The demand for legal sovereignty does not automatically translate into a denial of individual criminal responsibility. But equally, an external mechanism cannot be treated as untouchable by the constitutional debate of a state seeking to exercise authority over its own legal order.
After the vote in the Assembly, the main question remains open: who has the final say over the legal order of the Republic of Kosovo?