World of Work in Montenegro: Modernizing the public employment service in a changing labour market

Dear Minister Milatović, Your Excellency Mr Arrick, dear Markus

Thank you all very much for the opportunity to address you on such an important occasion and a very important topic of modernization of the public employment service, where our sister agency ILO plays quite an important role.

Improved efficiency of labour market institutions is at the heart of the Decent Work Country Programme, which ILO signed 2019 jointly with the Government and Social Partners, and which is an important part of our current framework of cooperation with the Government.  

As clearly indicated in our recent joint UN report Common Country Assessment, which looks in depth into major country’s development challenges but also suggests way forward, labour market is seen as one of the major determinants of building back stronger after the COVID-19 pandemic. In the rapidly changing labour market, with unemployment rates increasing, functional institutions will be essential to help some of the most affected categories such as unemployed women, men and young people to prevent inactivity and facilitate a swift and efficient return to the labour market. No doubt, Montenegro’s response to its complex labour market challenges and to the country’s international obligations is hinged on the ability of its institutions to have a pivotal role in terms of labour market governance.

In this regard, I’m grateful to ILO for supporting the country in strengthening the labour and employment legislation, within the efforts to meet the Chapter 19 closing benchmark – functional labour market institutions. With the support of the UK Embassy and the Good Governance Fund, the ILO has been helping the country in two major streams: Firstly by providing strategic support to institutional upgrade of the labour market legislation and institutions, including the modernization of the Employment Agency of Montenegro. Secondly by convening practitioners from Montenegro together with those from region and also EU member states. Therefore, on behalf of UN team in Montenegro, I would like to thank UK Government for its support to ILO in this enormously important work.

As I’m sure you all know, UN family in Montenegro is a well-oiled, coherent team, with various UN agencies working shoulder to shoulder in bringing comparative advantages in their specific areas of expertise, to help the country achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The support which ILO provides to Montenegro in advancing on SDG 8 - Decent work and economic growth - is widely complemented with support of UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR, WHO and regionally based UN agencies on fulfilling other SDGs of the Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030.

To handle the transition towards the Agenda 2030 and its core principle to leave no one behind, Montenegro needs to particularly embrace the digital economy and to work towards development of an agile digital public sector to enable its accessibility to those who are on the margins of society. This will naturally lead to further growth of digital economy and development of more diverse economy after COVID, because, by now, I think that we all learned too well that we cannot rely on the tourism industry alone. In this regard, it is critical to enable green and renewable economy to grow, and this is an area where digitalization will play a crucial role and the UN family with agencies like ILO stand ready to support that process ahead together with the Government, civil society and private sector where we would very much like to see Montenegrin women entrepreneurs lead the way.

With this, let me close my remarks by congratulating you all for your hard work in this important field and to thank to all of you who helped on this path.

Thank you.