Ohrid – Another, second in a series of peer visits of the Public Employment Services (PESs) from the Western Balkan (WB) economies within 2022 PES bench-learning exercise, ended today in Ohrid, North Macedonia.

During the two-day working visit, hosted by the PES of North Macedonia, WB PES representatives from all five WB economies (Albania, BiH, Kosovo*, Montenegro, Serbia) and Croatian PES representative heard the presentations on the work of their hosts and exchanged experiences and good practices. The presentations were followed by fruitful discussions and interest of the visiting peers into performance and practices of the North Macedonian PES and modalities of their services’ provision.   

Also, North Macedonia is the WB economy that has implemented the Youth Guarantee (YG) on a pilot basis. YG is an important initiative currently introduced by all WB economies, therefore relevant exchanges around the topic of the YG also took place during the meeting. 

Here is what the visiting peers (WB and EU), the host (North Macedonia) and consultants had to say about the 2nd PES Bench-learning peer visit

The idea behind the WB PES bench-learning cycle is to bring together the expertise of different PESs in the WB, and in this case, the EU PES - the Croatian PES, on the basis of the EU-PES bench-learning model, with the goal to exchange experiences and enhance operations of PES. 

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The PES bench-learning exercise is conducted in multi-annual cycles, and the 2022 cycle is organized by the Regional Cooperation Council’s (RCC) Employment and Social Affairs Platform 2 (ESAP 2) project. This cycle builds on the achievements of the previous cycle conducted by the ESAP 2 predecessor project. This round of bench-learning in Western Balkans, guided by experts from the EU, is developed as a systematic approach, combining performance comparison and mutual learning activities, aimed at continuous performance enhancement of PES towards better service delivery.