European Funds Ministry, WB discuss linking entrepreneurship to education system, through EU-funded vouchers

The representatives of the Ministry of European Funds (MFE) and those of the World Bank are discussing the possibility of implementing entrepreneurship in the Romanian education system, through vouchers from the European funds programmes aimed at improving human resources, the relevant minister Marcel Bolos said on Monday.

Minister Bolos says he had a discussion with the Head of the Representation Office for Romania and Hungary of the World Bank, Tatiana Proskuryakova, "a very applied discussion for what we would change, perhaps, as a paradigm in Operational Programme (OP) "Human Capital" [financing programme of the European Commission]. She drew our attention to the fact that we can discuss about connecting the component or the educational cycle, the one that is followed by the young people within their studies, during the period of their studies at university level or at the level of technical colleges or on the dual education side, we can link this component of the educational cycle with the entrepreneurship component, through a voucher system, for those with entrepreneurial skills. We are talking about the various categories of beneficiaries with entrepreneurial skills, who thus validate their business qualities," said Marcel Bolos, in a meeting with company mangers that have benefited from European funds.

He told Romanian entrepreneurs that they have a duty to align themselves to the European trends of promotion of the highly qualified economic fields, in order to generate very high added value.

"I used this opportunity to make the transition to the next programming period, that is the new European budget cycle, 2021 - 2027, in which such initiatives, i.e. Start-Up Plus or Start-Up Diaspora, must be part of our future concerns. We cannot ignore the trend at European level. Today, concerns such as smart specialization, digital economy, the acquisition of skills in highly qualified fields are in the care and concern of the European Commission, so we also have this duty to align ourselves to these trends that take place at European level and to promote, in addition to what we have done so far in the field of entrepreneurship and jobs, these areas of high qualification, which concentrate in on place human intelligence, but it generates very high added value activities in the economy," the minister said.

According to him, the Government has the difficult task of supporting the business milieu to develop in these directions with high added value.