Who is Who – Donika Gervalla-Schwarz: Hoxha’s “pioneer,” Rugova’s follower, and Kurti’s Minister

Members of the Self-Determination Movement have nominated Donika Gervalla, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Diaspora in the caretaker government, as the new Speaker of the Assembly of Kosovo. Her tenure has been marked by a series of controversies, while her past has been shaped by the tragic loss of her father and early political engagement. On several occasions, she has accused Belgrade of being a threat to the region and has insisted that the establishment of the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities (ASM) must be conditional on Serbia’s unconditional recognition of Kosovo.

“If you do not know where you come from, you cannot know where you want to go,” Gervalla declared in 2021, upon her appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora in Albin Kurti’s government.
Kosovo’s media already that year dubbed her the “minister of mistakes” after a series of gaffes on her own or the Ministry’s social media accounts.

Among the most notable missteps was a congratulatory message on Andorra’s Independence Day illustrated with Moldova’s flag, or the announcement of then-NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s visit to Kosovo with an image of the UN flag. Most of these posts were later corrected.

A far more serious diplomatic scandal occurred in October 2022 in Skopje, when then-Prime Minister of North Macedonia, Zoran Zaev, reportedly asked her to leave his office after she allegedly demanded that North Macedonia withdraw from the Open Balkan initiative or “face consequences.” “I am sorry, madam, but this shouting is intolerable in my office. Out of courtesy, I will not escort you out myself, but you cannot speak this language in this way,” Zaev was quoted as saying by Ekonomia Online.

The latest diplomatic incident was recorded in April this year, when the honorary consul of Kosovo in Montenegro, Shkëlqim Devolii, had his mandate terminated. Gervalla explained the decision by citing that his Montenegrin ID card listed his birthplace as Peja, “a city in Serbia.”

Asset Declarations and Court Proceedings

During her four-year mandate, Gervalla was accused by Klan Kosova of doubling her assets. On 31 January 2023, the Basic Prosecution in Pristina filed charges against her for “failure to declare or false declaration of assets.”

She was accused of failing to disclose her ownership of the company Alblingua UG in Germany, her directorship of the “Gervalla” foundation in Kosovo, and assets belonging to her husband and children.
Before the court, she defended herself, saying these were “oversights.” Two years later, on 19 November 2024, the Basic Court in Pristina acquitted her, with Judge Dibran Jusufi ruling that her actions did not constitute a criminal offense.

That same year, however, her declared wealth was nearly double what it had been at the time of her indictment. In 2021, she reported assets worth €360,495. By 2024, her declared wealth had increased by 48.59%.

In February this year, Reporteri accused Gervalla and the MFA of employing family members and former government advisers to oversee diaspora elections. The report was not denied, even though it named close relatives of Kurti’s chief of staff, the brother of a senior Self-Determination official, and a former Agriculture Ministry adviser.

Meanwhile, according to RFE/RL data for January 2023 – June 2024, her ministry paid $277,000 to two lobbying firms in the United States, which, according to filings, recorded just six contacts in total.

Positions on Dialogue, the ASM, and the Serbian Orthodox Church

On the EU-facilitated dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, her position has remained consistent: the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities can only be established once Serbia formally recognizes Kosovo. She reiterated this even after the Franco-German draft proposal was presented.

“If Serbia is able to accept the package in its entirety, we will keep our promise. The draft presented by our partners makes sense only if Serbia recognizes Kosovo; otherwise, the Association is a Trojan horse, like the Republic of Srpska in Bosnia,” she stated in May last year.

Gervalla has repeatedly accused Belgrade of destabilizing the region, her sharpest statement being to Germany’s Deutschlandfunk on 2 October 2023, when she warned that if the international community continued to “tolerate” Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, war could ensue.

She has also criticized the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), calling it “historically part of a nationalist ideology.”

“Just days after being allowed to visit Kosovo, Patriarch Porfirije appeared in Moscow with President Putin, giving statements undermining Kosovo’s sovereignty and fueling divisions in the region. This is nothing new—the SOC has historically been part of nationalist ideologies that drove wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo in the 1990s,” she wrote on Facebook.

Her opponents have also reproached her for statements against former KLA leaders, particularly Hashim Thaçi and Kadri Veseli. “Within my mandate and powers, I will look for materials to forward to the Special Court. The whole world knows who Kadri Veseli and Hashim Thaçi are. Kadri Veseli was the head of an organization that committed crimes against political opponents,” Gervalla declared in May 2021.

Family Background and Unresolved Murder of Jusuf Gervalla

Donika Gervalla is the daughter of Jusuf Gervalla, a journalist, writer, and founder of the “National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo,” who was assassinated in January 1981 in Untergruppenbach, Germany, together with his brother and a family friend.

She maintains that Serbian security services were responsible, though some historians argue that other Albanian factions may also have been involved.

Jusuf Gervalla had been linked to Marxist-Leninist groups inspired by Enver Hoxha’s Albania, and his activism in exile connected him with both Albanian and radical émigré organizations across Europe. His murder, however, has never been officially solved.

Biography and Political Career

According to Self-Determination, Donika Gervalla was born in October 1971 in Skopje. She spent her early childhood in Pristina and fled with her family in 1980 to join her father in exile in Germany. After his assassination, the family resettled in Tirana.

A musically gifted child, she studied flute at conservatories in Tirana and Hamburg, and law at the University of Hamburg. Deutsche Welle noted that she grew up in “Enver Hoxha’s communist dictatorship,” once even chosen to present flowers to Hoxha at a ceremony.
Politically, she became active in the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) in Germany, serving as vice president (1993–1997) and later as a member of its presidency. She later led the LDK branch in Germany before resigning in 2018 during internal party rifts.

Ahead of the 2021 elections, she joined Vjosa Osmani’s party Guxo, winning over 70,000 votes—more than then-Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti. In September 2022, she was elected co-chair of Guxo.
She is married to former CDU Bundestag MP Stefan Schwarz, with whom she has five children.