Fipe, 'Tunisia Project' kicks off to train staff

AAA is looking for bartenders and chefs, waiters and kitchen staff, dishwashers and hotel porters, pizza makers and housekeepers. The catering and hospitality industry is lacking both general and specialised personnel: tens of thousands of workers. An alarm that falls in the very quarter of the start of the high season when, in the April-June 2026 quarter, more than 340,000 people are expected to be hired in the tourism and catering sector alone, an increase of 4.2% compared to 2025. Yet, according to 77% of entrepreneurs in the restaurant segment had difficulty finding the professional profiles they needed, such as

e.g. waiters, cooks and pizza makers.

This was the start of the 'Tunisia Project' promoted by Fipe-Confcommercio and Aigrim-Fipe for the training and placement in Italia of 60 workers in the catering sector. The turning point was an institutional meeting behind closed doors in Tunis to define operational and training guidelines between the Italian delegation, the Tunisian Minister of Labour Riadh Chaoued and representatives of Elis, the project partner. During the meeting, mutual commitments were renewed for the launch of the initiative and the guidelines of the training course were defined.

"This project demonstrates that it is possible to seriously and systematically tackle the issue of the shortage of personnel in the catering industry, by building regulated, transparent and quality paths," said Aldo Cursano, Deputy Vice President of Fipe-Confcommercio. Collaboration with Tunisian institutions and qualified partners makes it possible to invest in skills even before entering Italia, guaranteeing benefits to both companies and workers. If we know how to consolidate and replicate this model, we will be able to provide ourselves with a stable instrument of international cooperation capable of supporting the competitiveness of our sector'.

The meeting with Minister Chaoued was part of the Italian delegation's mission to Tunis on the occasion of the 'Tunisian-European Forum: Training, Employment, and Mobility in the Hospitality and Restaurant Sector', an event promoted by Ilo and the European Commission. The delegation, made up of Aldo Cursano, Deputy Vice President of Fipe-Confcommercio, Riccardo Orlandi, Vice President of Fipe-Confcommercio and President of Aigrim-Fipe, and Andrea Chiriatti, Area Director of Fipe-Confcommercio, took part in the work of the forum with a dedicated stand and with speeches in the official panels, including a testimony by Aldo Cursano on collaboration between public and private to support employment in the tourism sector.