Reforming and modernizing the Education and Vocational Training system, in order to approach the highest European standards, remains one of the government’s objectives in the field of education, in the context of a growing and developing economy, especially in the priority sectors, where the demand for qualified employees increases daily, affecting the employment structure in the country.

Within the framework of the commitments undertaken for the National Strategy for Employment and Skills 2030, the second National Conference of Education and Vocational Training 2024 took place today with the theme “The Ability to Participate in the Labor Market and Professions of the Future”, – organized by the Ministry of Economy, Culture and Innovation, in cooperation with the Delegation of the EU and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), with the support of the Program “Development of Skills for Employment” of UNDP.

The conference aims to foster engagement and technical discussions to optimize the VET system, to encourage active participation of the private sector, to explore alternative ways of developing human capital and to design policies for lifelong learning and an economy with qualified individuals. The conference program includes sessions to discuss strategies and solutions for challenges and opportunities in the VET field.

Prime Minister Edi Rama also participated in the opening of the Conference, emphasizing that it is time to build a structured dialogue with the for-profit sector, addressing the need of direct contribution of companies to the increase of the country’s capacities, to educate the young people with skills needed for the market.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: In fact, professional education and the need for qualified labor have marked 2024 and definitely marked this decade as the decade of a war, which has started and the intensity of which is progressively increasing throughout Europe. It is a struggle to cope with the consequences of Europe’s dramatic demographic decline, which puts us and countries like us, here in Europe, in front of a two-fold challenge; on the one hand, increasing the professional skills of our young people to respond to the needs of a job market that is always demanding qualified personnel and on the other hand, facing the ever stronger pressure of rich and large countries of Europe to absorb this qualified workforce.

Today, the conditions to have an open debate on vocational education and to create a common sense of appreciation of the necessity of supporting the further professional qualification of younger people are much more favorable due to the fact that the business sector has begun to see with their own eyes the sharp contradiction between its ambition to grow and on the other hand, the ever more alarming lack of human capacities.

Fortunately, this has begun to be reflected in a significant way in the increase of wages, which is simply a first step in the shaping of an awareness that the human capital of an enterprise is of foremost importance.

A fairer distribution of profit with the employees themselves is not a matter of generosity, but a matter of necessity. Thus the opportunity has now arised to build a structured dialogue with entrepreneurship, especially with big business, about the need for direct contribution of companies towards capacity-building for state structures which train young people with the necessary skills for the market so that the market does not create vacancies, which remain empty, no longer because of the paying capacity of the enterprise, but because of the lack of skills for certain jobs.

Today, we are facing a very stubborn fact, especially in the tourism industry, which is a new industry in Albania regarding the ecosystem which has been created, which is rapidly increasing the ambition, the desire, and the investment opportunities because Albania is being considered as a tourist destination. All hotel structures of a certain level offer, not simply salaries incomparable to 3 – 4 years ago, but also the willingness to pay more to meet their needs according to all the functions and roles that an enterprise of this nature should have, but the problem lies in human capital.

This still contrasts fortunately in this case with the fact that we don’t have a permanent shortage of people, but we do have a shortage of people’s skills.

We don’t have a shortage of young people who can get involved and have a secure path to a well-paid job in this industry, but we have a shortage of young people who can fill a place, possessing the skills that place needs. Here lies the need for a new structure between the industry, – I took tourism as an example, but I can also take other sectors, including the public one – the central level, the local level, and professional schools.

It is time for us to invite entrepreneurship into an inevitable rationale. A rationale that needs to coordinate forces, needs joint investment, with clear terms, with mutual benefit, for us, to have more dignified wages for the workforce and for the enterprise to have available workforce which offers a dignified performance according to the workplace.

For years there has been a ranking list of incomes and average salaries in our region, and for years, Montenegro is in first place with a significant difference with other countries, which has been narrowed, but again not equalized. If we ask ourselves how it is possible and why, the answer is very simple: Montenegro does not produce ammunition, it does not produce missiles, it does not produce computers. Montenegro has been the pioneer country of the transformation of tourism throughout this region and has managed to create a tourism industry with a well-known reputation in the world, thanks to which it has been able to completely raise the per capita income.

Undoubtedly, Albania today has the opportunity to aim, without question, not only for the first place with a difference from other countries in the region in tourism, but it has the obligation to aim to bring about a continuous growth through this industry, progressive income and wages. But, in order to succeed, we need not only to have better developing projects, but also to have more investments every year, which is happening step by step and will become even more pronounced, but also paving the way to turn this industry into a decent income base for properly qualified employees.

Here, the interests of the public and private sector are completely aligned, but on the other hand, the private sector must assume some responsibilities, starting from a direct financial contribution to the vocational education system without which we cannot succeed as a country.

A few days ago, Albania was rated by “Standard & Poors” with a new rating level for the first time and went from a stable B+ for several years to 2B -. Of course, the next step is 2B+, but what I want to emphasize is that last year, according to the report of the Bank of Albania, which came out in the last few days, we reached a record figure of 1.5 billion euros, more or less, foreign direct investments, which is a big leap from a stable trend of the past years hovering around 1 billion, but which is just the beginning of another trend, to go to 2, 2.5, 3, 4 billion.

It is completely possible, but with one condition, that we have human resources, able to increase investors’ interest and to cope with this general growth of the country in the next 5 years, until 2030. The growth will be extraordinary, but at the same time it will bring an extraordinary pressure on our capacities.

There is also a problem here, that in the years leading up to 2030, we have to bear all the new obligations arising from the new phase of membership in the European Union, and many people mistakenly think that membership in the European Union is a process that belongs only to the government. Actually, no!

Membership in the European Union, until the opening of negotiations, is generally a process that belongs to the government. At the moment when the negotiations are opened, the European Union does not negotiate! The European Union puts forward a whole list of demands and says: “Mangi questa minestra”, as it is said in the language of the ambassador of the European Union that we are very lucky to have from a country that understands us better than others.

In this process, the European Union looks at governance, looks at the justice system, looks at other independent agencies, but also looks at the private sector and if we abstract and say: all the structures of the public sector, from the government, to the judiciary and to the various independent agencies meet the conditions, that will not be enough, if the business sector does not meet the conditions too. If the performance of the enterprise sector, if the products of the country or the economic activities of the country do not meet the standards of the European Union.

So, we are at a stage when we all have to go an extra kilometer in our way of thinking to get closer to membership. If we talk about vocational education, today we are still very far from the standard. A long way from where we need to get to, and we don’t need to get there in 10 years, but we need to get there very soon.

We have a school in Albania, among others, called Hermann Gmeiner, which has shown by example why it doesn’t take rocket science to address this need for the highest quality and to give students a fantastic perspective.

The problem with the “Hermann Gmeiner” school is that there is currently a 50% acceptance rate, because of its capacity, and at the “Hermann Gmeiner” school the difference is made with decimal points, between 10, 9.9, 9.8, thus attracting a precious capital of that age, but that, on the other hand when it graduates, it leaves for universities abroad. We cannot prevent students from aiming to go to universities that respond to their capacity and ambition abroad, but we must manage to give more alternatives here. Without forgetting to tell the parents, without forgetting to tell the children that today statistically in Albania, 70% of job requests are for professionals or craftsmen, middle and high technicians. While only 30% of the demands of the market are for higher university education, law, and this is because for many years, thanks to what was done in the previous years, we will be the country with the largest number of lawyers per square kilometer in the world. While the numbers per square kilometer of professionals, medium technicians, senior technicians, craftsmen are very modest.

In closing, not to go on any further, considering that despite the weaknesses that vocational education may still have, despite the fact that coverage with infrastructure and quality is still not guaranteed throughout the territory, 57% of those who graduate from these schools of education professional, start working within 6 months and have good salaries.

I believe that with the new funding that we have made available for vocational education, as well as with another funding ready in June, we will cover all the need for reconstruction and retraining of vocational education schools and boarding schools in the territory, so that the infrastructure meets all possible needs from A to ZH, not only for learning, but also for food, for sleeping, and for other recreational activities.

The youth guarantee with the European Union is a great project, but until it materializes, until those funds are made available, and until we see the benefits of that investment, we risk losing a lot of time. Therefore, while simultaneously working for the youth guarantee and facing the bureaucracy of the European Union with the heroism that characterizes us in terms of patience, we must and will increase public investments in vocational education, support from the state budget for vocational education and we will definitely ask the for-profit sector to be involved in the financing of vocational education.

I want to thank the Swiss ambassador especially, for the fact that the program of Switzerland’s continuous support since time immemorial as they say, there has been an uninterrupted component of support for vocational education and surely, the Swiss know something when they insist persistently on vocational education. If Switzerland is what it is today, it doesn’t take much digging to see that it is not the banks that make Switzerland, but the skilled workforce in vocational education. Switzerland’s extraordinary capacity to turn every human resource fresh out of primary school into a resource for the economy.

Thank you for sure to all the others, I will not list any, because of the risk of forgetting someone. The European Union, of course, I thanked in my own way, because the European Union’s main contribution, apart from all others, is that it sharpens our patience in a form for which we will be grateful all our lives, because without that patience, we don’t evolve. Of course, in order to go ahead, we will suffer, but in the meantime we will become strong.