Albania’s Brain Gain Efforts Thwarted by Red Tape

Among the most cited problems of those returning to Albania is the local work culture and corruption. Young professionals also highlighted difficulties having their degrees recognised by the Ministry of Education and ultimately problems finding a job.

“With all the desire to repatriate young professionals trained abroad, they have often little or no relations with government institutions,” said the report published last week. “Those who get help to return are very few,” it adds.

An estimated 1.4 million Albanians emigrated in the two decades following the collapse of communist regime of former Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha in 1991.

According to the emigration office at the Ministry of Labour, about 40 per cent of Albanians with higher education qualifications left the country in the 1990s, and those coming back often face a mountain of bureaucratic obstacles when they try to turn their foreign-earned skills and degrees into a job.

In 2006, with the help of the UNDP, the Albanian government set up a brain gain program, which aimed to create the necessary incentives and mechanisms for halting and reversing the wave of professionals headed abroad.

However, according to EMA’s report even those qualified individuals that have returned have doubts that they will remain in Albania in the future. Roughly 42 per cent of those surveyed find they are advancing little or not at all in their careers, while 36 per cent do not see themselves in Albania in the next five years.