EU-Syria seminar on vocational education and training for economic development
Syria-European Union, Economics, 2/2/2000

A seminar held under the title "Vocational education and training for economic development" is being held on February 1 - 3 at the Damascus Meridian Hotel.

It was attended by Arab officials concerned from Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan as well as the Palestinian territories and participants from the European Training Foundation.

In an opening statement to the seminar Dr. Marc Pierini, head of the delegation of the European Commission, said this seminar made it clear that the activities conducted by the European Union, which are implemented at the request of the Syrian authorities, are geared to building strong links between Syria and the EU, especially in the economic field, in order to allow Syria to take its full place in the world economy and to make the best of its strong potential.

Pierini said these new links will be beneficial for Syria if it undertakes a process of modernization of its economic policies and institutions, upgrading business and, of course, training and education.

The sequence of operations between Syria and the EU is a logical one: helping economic modernization now will help Syria reap the benefits of a close association with Europe tomorrow. Ultimately, this will result in a higher prosperity and stability for Syria and the Syrian people.

He hinted that one of the key objectives of the European Training Foundation, is to disseminate expertise in the field of training within the European Union, between the EU and Central Europe, and more recently between the EU and the Mediterranean region.

He added that there is one thing that is common to all EU institutions and policies: They are, by choice and inclination, building a united Europe through the pooling of the respective strengths and experiences of the member states, by sharing what went well or bad here and there, by joining European forces. And, he said, this is exactly what Europe is offering the Mediterranean region through the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, and this is what all EU members and the 12 Mediterranean countries, including Syria, unanimously agreed to do during the Barcelona conference in November 1995.

This seminar which has one recurrent theme about education and training for economic development-- the importance of the business sector's involvement in training as well as the other European Training Foundation activities in the Mediterranean-- is indeed part of this effort. He said: We are not here to impose any "model" or "policy," but to share with the participants our own experience.

Pierini indicated the many success stories of Syrian businesses exporting to the European market, adding that Europe is a large and rich market "at your doorstep." But it is also a very demanding market with a lot of competition, competition from within Europe, from Eastern Europe, from the Mediterranean and from the rest of the world. He added that Syria needs to be highly competitive in order to succeed in the European market. Therefore Syria needs to market good products and, to do so, have an efficient training system, capable of adjusting its output to the evolution of the needs.

The same kind of argument goes when speaking of attracting private foreign investment in Syria, Pierini said. He recommended, "This is why, in a fast changing world, the Syrian training system should in our view be capable of adjusting permanently to the needs of Syrian exporters and to the needs of foreign investors in Syria."

He continued that the EU is already helping with education and training in Syria. He said that the current programs of the European Union in Syria already have a strong education and training component. Among these programs, Pierini indicated, are The Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technologies; the electricity project, which has a strong training component; the Syrian -European Business Center, which runs training courses; and the banking sector program, which has completed several training courses.

He also said that at the present, the EU has 11 projects worth 107 million in grants awaiting implementation, saying that almost all these projects have a training component, and two of them are exclusively about education and training: One is the business school and the other is an archaeological training program.

The EU chief of mission said that under the programming period which has just been completed at the end of 1999, the EU had intended together with Syria to set up a specific vocational training project. Unfortunately, both sides failed to reach an agreement on the substantive elements of the project in time to ensure the financing. Before the EU can consider such a project for future financing, a long process is probably necessary to reconcile the respective concepts about training.

He underlined the importance of this seminar, jointly run by the Ministry of Education in Syria and the European Training Foundation, as an extremely valuable opportunity to bridge differences of opinion and work towards commonly agreed concept.

Previous Stories:
  Seminar on EU- Syrian cooperation held on January 22 in Damascus   (1/24/2000)
  EU to help rebuild the Golan   (1/18/2000)
  Damascus hosts Euro-Mediterranean cooperation symposium   (10/25/1999)

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