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Ditari i Opozitës

Tabaku: Government funding for education is the lowest in the region

Politiko 2024-09-10 13:40:44

The deputy of the Democratic Party, Jorida Tabaku, in her capacity as the Chairperson of the European Affairs Committee, criticized the draft law on scientific research, describing it as not fully compatible with European legislation and the lack of alignment with the commitments that Albania has towards the European Union and the Agreement of Stabilization-Association.

In her speech, Tabaku expressed concern about the low level of funding for scientific research, stressing that the government budget for this field only reaches 500 million ALL, far from the average of EU countries that spend about 1% of the budget of theirs.

Tabaku also expressed concern about the lack of mention of the issue of plagiarism in the draft law, describing it as a serious problem for the quality of scientific research in Albania.

Ms. Tabaku's speech:

As mentioned, this draft law does not align European legislation. However, scientific research is one of the main obligations derived from the European Union Treaty, the Stabilization and Association Agreement and is part of the National European Integration Plan.
First, I see with concern that we will have the allocation of grants from the ministry in terms of scientific research. In the higher education reform that the government itself approved here and 10 years ago is already underway, scientific research and decentralization of universities was one of the main criteria.

Clearly, poor funding from the government, which for scientific research reaches a maximum of 500 million lek when the average of the EU countries is 1% of the entire budget for scientific research is one of the main reasons.

I see with concern that plagiarism is mentioned only 1 time in this bill. While we have seen cases, a large part of the colleagues are lecturers themselves, but we have a few widely mentioned cases regarding plagiarism. While in the code, if I'm not mistaken, only article 32 mentions plagiarism, while also in the Criminal Code, plagiarism is mentioned as a criminal offense punishable by a fine. If we talk about the quality of scientific research, then we must also take measures to prevent the occurrence of plagiarism. Will the Albanian government take measures to establish a database for all scientific research and scientific works.

It is another element which I do not see reflected in the law. I greatly appreciate the foresight of my colleague Gjonaj, who expected that the solution to the pandemic would come from scientific research here in Albania, but I regret that the reality today is that universities have been unable to conduct quality scientific research, and secondly, to attract funds of the EU. In the "Horizon 2020" program, Albania only had 5 million euros, the figures are a little more optimistic as we discussed yesterday at 6.2 million euros for the current "Horizon" program and we have also discussed with the SASPAC office here, we do not have any coordination with universities to increase their capacities to absorb more funds in this direction

The fact of financing education, 2.9 percent of GDP, remains extremely worrying, when the average of the countries of the region is 3 percent and 5 percent of the EU, solutions which are not provided even in this draft law.

No matter how much the draft law tries to provide a guiding framework for scientific research, it must be accompanied by the budget, but at the same time with other measures related, as mentioned by the ecologist Collaku, to the removal of politicization from scientific research, to the decentralization of this and that function as in the whole world and not giving political orientations and scientific research.
We were bombarded with propaganda all day long, please remove it from scientific research, this bill does not provide a solution.