The Southern and Eastern Mediterranean region is characterised by profound socio-economic challenges and opportunities. Morocco and Tunisia are no exception. Unemployment rates were 10.5% and 16.1% respectively in 2022, while the phenomenon of young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) affected around 30% of 15–24 year-olds in both countries (11.7% of 15–29 year-olds in the EU).

Governments are aware of the structural problems in the labour market in terms of skills shortages and relationship between jobseekers and employers. Since 1998, the European Training Foundation (ETF) has been helping the central government and local actors in Morocco and Tunisia to strengthen an inclusive social dialogue on skills and vocational training policy, focusing on human capital development and entrepreneurship to tackle youth unemployment.

“In Morocco, cooperation with the EU over the past 30 years has been a success. This has contributed to alleviate illiteracy and access to education, including in rural areas,” says Mariavittoria Garlappi, ETF country liaison for Morocco from 2009 to 2014. “A key feature of the Moroccan vocational education and training (VET) system are public-private partnerships on training to tackle labour shortages. The state pays for the infrastructure of the VET centres and for the trainers, while the outcomes in terms of quality and relevance of the training and graduates’ employment rates benefit from the deep involvement of the employers who are responsible for the training centres.”

“Already in the early ’90s, Tunisia was the most innovative country in VET and a beacon for the whole Mediterranean, an inspiration for everyone in the region. The government, with the help of the EU, started to look at the demand side, which was not so obvious till then,” says Garlappi, who was also ETF country liaison for Tunisia between 2014 and 2019. “After the revolution, I felt a renewed bottom-up inspiration, a new spirit in the society which was reflected in our cooperation and resulted in promoting entrepreneurial learning across the entire VET system.”