The 3rd National Conference on Vocational Education and Training was held today, where the results of the reform in vocational education and training were discussed, as well as the “Skills 2030” vision for the development of skills, the increase of employment and the strengthening of the competitiveness of the Albanian economy.

Prime Minister Rama, who was present during the proceedings of the conference, stated, among other things, that the aim is to increase the number of young people who choose vocational education and “if possible, to succeed so that by 2030 one in three pupils will attend vocational education.”

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Greetings to all of you, to all the teachers present here, the tireless teachers of vocational education!

It is an important day to speak about what we have done, but above all about what we want to do in the strategic journey for employment and skills.

It is a day when, meanwhile, 3,500 graduates of vocational education have their exams today, and I want to wish all of them success in their exams. It is also a day when, realistically, the balance is quite meaningful and very encouraging.

When we started this path, we had a vocational education system that was entirely degraded and completely useless for the young women and young men who went to vocational education schools simply and only so as not to be left without any other possibility, but who found there no conditions to develop their talent and to acquire their profession.

They simply and only found some teachers who, however dedicated they were, found it impossible to make learning attractive, because there were no minimum infrastructure conditions, there were no laboratories, and there was no link at all between vocational education and the market.

Today the situation is entirely different. If at the beginning of this journey, the pupils who entered the doors of vocational education were slightly more than 10%, today they are almost 20%. But this is a phase, while it is not the destination, because our objective is to have one in three pupils in vocational education.

Fortunately, today we can also speak of having crossed a high wall of prejudices that were connected to vocational education. Precisely because once vocational education was like a refuge for pupils who had results that gave them no chance of going to university, although the universities had their doors wide open from all four sides, today we are in conditions where vocational education is also a choice. Precisely because it works, we have today a figure that not only speaks of this change but also encourages others to turn their eyes toward vocational education. Sixty-three percent of those who complete vocational education are employed.

A part of them start working even earlier, thanks to the reform we have carried out and the choice we have made for the dual system, referring to two or three countries that truly have the most admirable levels in the way they have built vocational education and turned it into a system that guarantees their economy and guarantees their welfare: Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

And there is a very interesting correlation between the strength of these countries, the model they have created in the eyes of the whole world, but also the idea associated with them as rich countries, and the fact that they are countries that have a great and historic commitment to vocational education. They are countries in which vocational education is an integral part of their economy, and they are countries where many people who complete vocational education do not remain simply craftsmen but become small entrepreneurs and succeed with their knowledge.

I am extremely pleased that today we can speak of a fact and of concrete proof of cooperation with precisely Switzerland and with an excellence of Swiss vocational education, the prestigious tourism school “EHL”, which has now opened its doors in Albania through twinning. But it is a complete twinning; it is not a symbolic twinning with our hotel and tourism school here in Tirana. One hundred percent of the pupils of this school are employed. One hundred percent of the pupils of this school, who today are sitting in the school benches, are contracted. Naturally, much more is needed, because our tourism industry system is a new system, but it is also a system that is still far from being a system that offers quality, and precisely for this reason, all interested parties who have invested in tourism need qualified employees at all levels.

I want to touch here on something that has become one of the jokes of recent days, related to a development that has sparked a major debate: the idea that foreign investors come to Albania to build resorts that are for the very rich and for workers from Pakistan, Bangladesh or the Philippines because they want to pay them very little, is an idea that has nothing to do with reality. It is a major mistake to speak in this way, and it is a major lie to think in this way.

First of all, it is not that we have many foreign investors in tourism. An interest from foreign capital and foreign enterprise in Albania has only just begun, linked to Albania’s success in tourism.

Until a few years ago, we had no interest, zero, from foreign capital and foreign enterprise in investing in Albanian tourism. Zero. Why? Albania was just as beautiful; Albanian nature was just as beautiful; its untouched character was just as much as it is today in those areas where nothing has been invested; yet there was no interest at all. The first interest that then materialized was the interest in the Tourist Port of Durrës, and after that interest, and after the path of that investment was opened, the interest of foreign capital and foreign enterprise in investing in tourism in Albania began to rise. Why? Because there was no trust at all.

The idea that large capital and major enterprises go to certain countries to invest in tourism to destroy those countries and exploit cheap labor is an idea born of total ignorance, because the opposite is true.

There is no evidence that foreign capital and prestigious international enterprises have played a role in the destruction of nature or have been the main cause of the damage done to the environment. The opposite is true!

Environmental damage has always come, and first, from stages of development that have been based not simply on domestic capital but have also been linked to a closed horizon regarding many of the complex topics of the field and have certainly been conditioned by the cost of construction and by the price. If we look at the Albanian coast today, the Albanian coast began to develop in Golem. Today it is unimaginable that anyone, any domestic entrepreneur, would appear at the doors of the authorities and propose that kind of development. Why? Because it is an entirely unacceptable development, but one connected to a time when possibilities were very limited, when capital was very modest, when knowledge was very limited and, above all, when purchasing power was very limited. Despite all the problems and shortcomings that construction development in the field of tourism has had, things have gradually improved, and developments have gradually become more qualitative.

The cost of construction has naturally been increasing, but the price has also been increasing.

Today the main problem of the tourism industry is not “how much should I pay”, and it is not present in the tourism industry today. The question is not: how much should I pay? The question is: where can I find the relevant employees for all levels, who also have the trade to do that work properly? And if anyone finds me a place on the Albanian coast, I always speak about the investments that have been made, I am not speaking about situations that may be semi-informal, I speak about hospitality where the pay is lower than in Greece, then I will be forced to reconsider this opinion. There is none! There is no place on the Albanian coast where, according to levels, the wage is lower than in Greece.

There is no place on the Albanian coast where the wage is lower than in Croatia; there is none! What is the problem? The problem is that those who incite racism against foreign workers and those who think that foreign workers come here from the Philippines as slaves, they do not want to work and receive a wage like in Greece and like in Croatia. This is very simple! Or they are not in that field at all; they are not at all in need of a job; on the contrary, they work on Instagram and give interviews about how their modest life costs 20 thousand euros per month.

The matter is very simple!

The higher the quality of the tourism system, the higher the wages are. The lower the quality of the system, the lower the wages will be. The higher the consumption of those who come to spend in that system, the higher the revenues of the system will be, and consequently also those of the state. This is a very simple equation. Switzerland, which is also a tourist country, is a very expensive country, but it has very high wages. It has very high wages for the simple reason that it has the possibility to be expensive, because it has a very high quality of its offer.

Returning to the EHL pupils, the EHL pupils are Albanian pupils who come from ordinary Albanian families, and today, as I said, all of them are contracted by the Albanian tourism system.

Today, the Albanian tourism industry is looking for workers, workers, workers, and it is suffering increasingly for qualified workers. Our task is to increase the number of tourism schools that relate to actors at the level of EHL, and I am very pleased that the plan is to expand the EHL chain also into other areas. But what is most beautiful in this story is that the industry itself is ready to take part, to sponsor, to sponsor the pupils who will go to attend that school, to have them later under contract and to employ them directly.

To oppose the increase in the quality of tourism and, above all, to reject foreign capital in the tourism industry means rejecting quality; it does not mean rejecting destruction.

Today, all developments that take place in tourism are no longer the developments of 10 years ago. I am speaking globally. Today, not only in Europe, where there are extraordinarily well-defined standards related to environmental protection and biodiversity, but not only in Europe; in no country anymore. The countries of the Middle East are not countries with rules and well-defined standards in the form of law as European countries are. They are not. They are countries where there is another system and another decision-making process. But where can you today, in the countries of the Middle East, carry out tourism projects that are not, first of all, projects with a very strong emphasis on respect for nature? They do not have greenery there, but today Abu Dhabi is the most perfect ecosystem of an inhabited urban area, Abu Dhabi. The number of trees and vegetation planted in Abu Dhabi, accompanied by water, which is part of the entire urban texture of Abu Dhabi, not only for decoration but for natural balance, is something that you cannot find in other countries for 1,001 reasons.

So, I want to say that it no longer exists, it no longer exists; it is an idiocy, the idea that foreign capital gathers hundreds of millions or billions, organizes itself and goes somewhere to create the Golem of the 1990s in Albania. It does not exist.

In Europe less is invested in tourism because Europe has a lot. Europe has also made great mistakes, especially southern Mediterranean Europe, which it has understood, on which it has reflected, and around which many strict standards have been created.

Therefore, today you cannot go to Portugal, you cannot go to Spain, in France forget it, you cannot go today even to Italy, even to Calabria, which is a disastrous anti-environmental area of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and propose projects that are not compatible with the ideal of nature. It does not happen.

To think this and to react to this is the same; it reminds me very much of the alarm and concern over the import of waste.

When a law was made to bring imported waste, which was not compatible with the waste circulation chain in Europe, where there is import of waste, but with many conditions and with well-defined standards and green lists, there was uproar here. And when we came to government, the first law I believe we passed, was the closure of the import of waste.

Here it is being made to seem as if waste is being imported, because it is an approach that does not start from the facts, does not start from the project, does not start from the environmental study, but starts only from a fear and at the same time from an ideology. An ideology that is not compatible with development.

Vocational education, to return to this topic, and I believe I am on this topic, is not a consolation for someone who cannot make it to university.

It is an opportunity for someone who has another talent and another chance in life, so that with their knowledge they do not remain a servant of someone who calls them on the phone and says, “come and fix the lights for me”, but with their knowledge they generate income, create a small business, create a small services company and serve in all systems, from digital systems to service systems.

And in closing, I want to bring, to move it entirely away from tourism, I want to bring another example. We made an agreement with “Fincantieri” to open the ship industry in Pashaliman, in Vlora. We have the shipyard, but we have nothing else there except the shipyard of the past.

Fincantieri is one of the greatest excellences in the world in the field of ship production and maintenance, and because they now want to increase production in the profile of military ships, some types of ships that are smaller than the very large ones, they want to make them with us in Albania, for the reason that in their shipyard they make large ships and they need volume.

We will initially produce warships for our army, two, if I am not mistaken, warships that are necessary according to the capacities determined for us by NATO, and then we will produce ships and sell ships jointly, through a joint company. The first thing we will do with Fincantieri is to go to the industrial commercial school of Vlora to present the project, to present the professions, and to invite the girls and boys of the industrial commercial vocational school of Vlora to sign agreements with Fincantieri and to start training, also going to Italy to Fincantieri, so that they are ready at the moment it begins.

We are speaking of 400 jobs at the beginning, which in perspective will go to 800. These are not jobs for lawyers, nor for economists.

I am glad that the ambassador referred to something that I always repeat, because in reality we became the country with the largest number of lawyers per square kilometre in the world. These are jobs for the entire chain of trades that that industry needs, from manual work to the manipulation or operation of robots.

This is vocational education. And not as a formality, but in reality, I want to thank very much both the Swiss government, the German government and the Austrian government, and naturally I thank the European Union for all the impetus with which it is helping us to give strength to vocational education, because however much the world is computerized, vocational education will remain an important pillar of the economy.

The profiles may change, but I do not believe anything can happen, but I do not believe that the sea will enter the mobile phone and offer the possibility to swim inside the mobile phone. I do not believe that the sun will enter the mobile phone and offer the possibility to place the mobile phone on oneself and sunbathe. I do not believe that the mobile phone can turn into a beach or into a hotel.

Therefore, as long as people are on this earth, they will need to be served by people, and I do not think that German tourists, when they come to Albania, will accept, instead of well-trained Albanian hosts trained by Switzerland, robots speaking Albanian to them, or even speaking German to them, and saying “welcome” to them. They will come here precisely for that part, which is the part of holidays, pleasure, and so on.

Therefore, I believe very much in vocational education, I believe very much in everything we are doing. We still have a lot to do. I am convinced that with the support of friends and with more communication about the values of this education, we will manage to increase the number of those who take part in vocational education and, if possible, succeed so that by 2030 one in three pupils will attend vocational education.

Thank you very much!