Dear Assistant Ministers, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

It is my pleasure to address you today when we mark the successful completion of the project dealing with entrepreneurial learning.

This area of assistance proved to be highly relevant for Bosnia and Herzegovina and fully in line with BiH Reform Agenda and the recently adopted Economic Reform Programme 2016-2018, which can contribute to improved competitiveness and sustainable employment.

As it has been highlighted by the European Training Foundation, one of the main challenges in the countries of the region, is the lack of engagement by education authorities in promoting entrepreneurial learning, and particularly entrepreneurship as a key competence as well as weak intelligence on enterprise skills.

With the successful implementation of this project, which is a continuation of the first Phase of the project “Entrepreneurial learning in Education Systems in BiH” (financed through IPA 2007 funds and completed in 2011), BiH education authorities have proven that they are much more advanced in this field compared to their neighbours.

The continuity in work is very important and we believe that this is one more reason for this project to be successful and yield good results. So let me name few of them.

The project contributed to further implementation of the EU 2020 policy recommendations for growth, sustainability and employability, and to the implementation of the Small Business Act for Europe.

The project has also addressed the current economic crisis causing increasing uncertainty for enterprises and individuals. This has made the need for entrepreneurial learning for all more urgent.

Other positive results are:

– the further development of the Qualifications Framework for BiH through support to all forms of education and training – formal, non-formal (what is learnt outside standard education curricula) and informal (what is learnt incidentally);

– the development of key competencies, since entrepreneurship is one of 7 key competencies contributing to a more entrepreneurial mind-set and behaviour;

– the increased number of small businesses and improved creativity and productivity of labour force;

– the establishment of policy partnership between economy and education; and

– the individual development of students, labour force and general population by teaching them to be more entrepreneurial and ready to start their own businesses and equipping the employees with skills to be innovative and adaptable in fast-changing economies.

These two projects have proven how the cooperation between the two sectors – economy, in particular SMEs development, and education sector, can contribute to their successful implementation. Despite a number of difficulties, due to the need to ensure inter-sectoral cooperation, and all other complexities with implementation of this kind of projects (many stakeholders, large number of ministries and agencies involved, etc.), the projects proved to be a very good example of excellent cooperation and mutual support of the two sectors.

I sincerely hope that this cooperation will continue through the policy partnerships, which have been established at entity and cantonal levels.

Before I conclude, I would like to mention that we are now in the phase of programming the EU assistance under IPA II to BiH. Further economic development of the country, increased employability of labour force, and development of skills for the labour force will be the priorities to be addressed in future.

The successful implementation of the project “Entrepreneurial Learning in BiH Systems phase II” has established a good basis for the programming exercise since it has included all elements of these priorities.

I would like to thank you all for coming here today to mark the successful implementation of this project.

Mr Massimo Mina is the Head of Operations Section for Social Development, Civil Society and Cross-Border Cooperation at the EU Delegation to BiH.