Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama given at the high-level Conference “Skills for the future – Southeast Europe”:

I am thankful for this invitation and I am thankful to this program and I consider this precise moment of the Conference as an opportunity to reflects on things that have been done and of course on things that need to be done.

For sure I am not a fan of seminars, workshops and conferences because I have spent a lot of time, long time ago, in such kind of events, which have not have very important outcomes. But in the same time I strongly believe that what you are talking here and what we are all together for here is very, very important for this country. It is very important for this country in a very particular moment when we experience the exhaustion of a jobless model of growth and, basically, of a model that has been focused on the exploitation of all our resources and potentials in a very unsustainable way.

And so, we are a bit now like a family that is struggling after having made on Monday and Tuesday fiesta with all it had in the fridge for the week. So, we are round Thursday and our big struggle is to find and to develop new sources of growth, and to change our model of development from a model based on some sources that apparently are not there anymore, like the construction boom, like remittances from emigrants and also like the involuntary crediting of the government from companies, in a model that should be based on sustainability and on a very coherent and sustainable exploitation of our sources of growth, such as oil and gas, minerals, tourism, agriculture, and for sure manufacturing. And, when it comes to the very high importance of our education model, which also needs to change because it has been a model based on the big illusion that everyone can become a lawyer, that for everyone there is the possibility to become an economist. And so, everyone had an opportunity to go to university without really going through a process based on competition and on merit, but through a process based on the capacity of paying. And by doing so we have lost skills, we have lost a lot of time and a lot of opportunities to build a qualified work force.

And so we are here experiencing the very fact that at the end countries do not differ among themselves from what they have but from what they know. Because, based on what we have we could pretend to be a well-developed country. We have everything countries of our size with a population of our population’s size would need to be well developed and well set. But as a matter of fact we are not. We are the second richest country in Europe for water resources, and who lives here knows very well that we have troubles to provide water to everyone 24 hours per day, we have troubles to irrigate all our lands, we have troubles to survive floods, we have troubles to survive electricity problems, although we are supposed to be one of the countries with the highest hydropower potential. So, compared to countries like Israel that do not have water and then have the best water system in the world, the question rises very simply: why this difference? And I think because of knowledge, because of knowledge and because, of course, institution. We lack institutions, we lack the knowledge that always make the difference between countries. And, on the other hand we a big social and psychological problem to overcome, because through all these years we have taught our young generations that life will be fine if you have a diploma. And, on the other hand we have somehow left a very big empty space, where in fact this country needs workforce for all types of skills. And a country that is pretending to have more foreign direct investment and is not able to fill this empty space is in trouble. So, we see investments in energy and then companies opening their own vocational training courses to train their workforce, because they can’t find technicians. The same in the oil sector, the same in tourism, so what we are trying to do now is to make sure this shift and to open a new path and to give to the young people not only one alternative, universities for an easy life, but universities for them who can compete and who can get it based on their merit, and vocational training for them who can get the right skills to face life and also to make money, and also to open a small business, and also to become big businessmen, why not.

So, in that respect I think that we finally have, thanks to this program a good strategy, although I don’t believe in strategies frankly speaking, because I’ve seen so many, and I’ve seen as many fail and I’m very skeptical, and very frankly speaking this strategy was the one I found the time and the patience to read because I was very curious, and I found a lot of good things in that. So, this country has never suffered from strategies and I think we have strategized more than many of developed countries, and that’s why we are in this situation because he have strategized a lot and we haven’t done any of it. And if I’m not wrong, only in education in 20 years we’ve had 7 national strategies. And we succeeded to have 2 different national strategies with one mandate of the same color of government, just because we had two different ministers. So, one minister had a national strategy, and the other minister had a totally different national strategy. Same party, same government, same mandate.

And we ended, as you know, by having the highest number of universities per capita in Europe and the lowest number of valuable diplomas per capita in Europe. But this strategy is something that I appreciated first and foremost because it is not just about how to have good intentions on vocational training, but it’s about how to match the private sector with education, and how to give to people the possibility to realize through their time of learning that they are learning something useful, and through what they are learning they can have a decent life. Because our vocational schools were the best joke in the country, so far. People learning how to fix electricity and not having any instrument in class, but just some pictures of lamps and of wires, and of walls, and some theory where to get it and how to fix it. And for sure it was not by coincidence that then classrooms were empty. And I’ve seen EU projects fail spectacularly, money invested, beautiful school, beautiful inauguration, beautiful speech, EU ambassador, Minister of Education, community, and after a week nobody was there, and the school practically remained empty. Because this very important connection was missing between education and real work, between school and enterprise, between the learning process and the doing process. So, I think that you know much better than me what this means and where the problems are and where we failed to address the problems during so many years.

I would like to conclude this intervention hoping that it was not the usual boring stuff the Prime Minister would say to an audience with a so highly qualified expertise, that we are seeing good results, or let’s say encouraging results by simply switching the tone and by simply changing the profile of schools and connecting them with enterprises. We are seeing good results, we had, if I’m not wrong, round 40% more people registering in vocational training schools, which is big. Although, it is a relative number because it is 40% more of what we had, which is very low. But you know, it’s our way as politicians to play with numbers, so I would say it’s a big thing, 40% more. But, frankly speaking is a big thing, because the most difficult step is to tell people now look, the fiesta is over, diplomas are not giving you the real life you are looking for if you don’t have the real skills to confront the market. Young people are getting it, slowly but firmly.

And also the numbers we are getting from the national labor service in the new offices we have opened are also very encouraging, so we have many people that are asking and we have considerable numbers that are being hired by the companies; we are always receiving the same feedback from companies that they are very much looking for people with skills. So, to cut it short I would say that we are just in the very beginning of our struggle. 6000 thousand people in the vocational training are not a big number, definitely, but it’s not a different number if we consider that this is the first year of a new approach, and it’s a number that is as big as the 1994 registration. Now, usually we have to compare with 2024 but we should consider that 1994 is the years that shows the decline of a previous system that was very much based on vocational training. So, 6000 is equal to that. We hope to increase it next years, and then again and again, and I think this is not a very ambitious task because it is absolutely doable and possible. So, I thank you very much for what you have done and I’m very grateful to this program especially, because it has been instrumental for us – I don’t know how good you have been before – but for us you have been very good, and we hope to continue and to take advantage from your expertise and from your assistance. And we very much believe that numbers will continue to grow in that aspect, which I think is what will comfort us at the end, not just to say that we have a strategy but we have numbers growing based on that strategy. So, this strategy is an instrument that for us is very valuable and hopefully we’ll be able to feed the new model we are trying to build, by having people with skills in all the sectors we think new ways of growth are possible to be opened and to change the chapter definitively, and not to rely anymore on what we get from remittances or from the construction boom or even what I mentioned as involuntary crediting from companies, because this is over, and I think it should be over, otherwise it would be a disaster.

Thank you very much!

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Ministers and other senior officials of Southeast European countries discussed today in Tirana the ways to conceive the region as a common market work.

The high-level conference “Skills for the future – Southeast Europe” was organized by the European Training Foundation (EFT), an agency of the European Commission. It serves also the cooperation between countries, as it coordinates professional standards for the regional labor market.

The conference was attend also by Prime Minister Rama, who emphasized the importance of orienting vocational education towards labor market requirements.

Mrs. Madlen Serban, representative of the European Training Foundation (ETF) welcomed and praised the attitude of Prime Minister Rama to continue the cooperation. She emphasized also, that part of the solution is to work together and not isolated.

Albania’s approach has been highly appreciated, as well as the initiatives it has undertaken – capacity increase by nearly 40% in vocational education, the opening of new Labor Offices, etc. – which have been considered as very encouraging. Albania’s positive steps in this direction had ​​this conference on Southeast Europe be held in Tirana.