Digital skills

The spread of digital technologies is having a massive impact on the economy and society. Basic digital skills are a precondition for inclusion and participation in the labour market and society. Innovations and breakthroughs in different areas such as artificial intelligence, virtual worlds, robotics, quantum technology and 6G are triggering a wave of demand for a new generation of advanced digital skills.

The Path to the Digital Decade Policy Programme sets out the EU’s objective of developing basic and advanced digital skills and competencies to guide the digital transformation. It outlines the EU's ambitious targets of ensuring 80% of adults having at least basic digital skills and reaching 20 million employed ICT specialists. It also promotes the access of women to this field and increasing the number of ICT graduates, by 2030.

Flagship Initiatives to support digital skills

In line with the Commission President’s political guidelines on a Union of Skills, the European approach to digital skills, includes exploring and piloting skills portability mechanisms like micro credentials, but also supporting the work on joint curricula.

The Digital Europe Programme (DEP) has invested over EUR 294 million to support skilling, upskilling and reskilling initiatives with the goal of improving the digital skills of the EU's workforce. These training initiatives cover areas such as artificial intelligence, data science, cloud computing and cybersecurity. DEP also finances initiatives to attract young talent to the field of ICT, build a strong EdTech ecosystem, and facilitate secure data sharing through the Common European Data Space for Skills. You can find more information in the brochure about our current projects [pdf].

An important step towards reaching the targets is to make high-quality information and resources available to all EU citizens and businesses. The Digital Skills and Jobs Platform offers open access to a repository of learning opportunities, learning pathways, career guiding, skills mapping and job trends, as well as funding opportunities and best practices. It also supports the National Digital Skills and Jobs Coalitions, which bring together a range of partners with the aim of developing concrete measures to deliver digital skills to every level of society in their countries.

Other policy areas that also feed into the Commission’s work on digital skills include:

• The Digital Education Action Plan
• The European Skills Agenda
• The European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan
• Work to improve media literacy
• The European strategy for data
• The European industrial strategy
• The European small and medium-sized enterprise strategy
• European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs)
• The coordinated plan on artificial intelligence

Background

Significant work remains to be done to reach the 2030 targets on digital skills: only 55.6% of the EU’s population has at least basic digital skills and, at the current pace, the number of ICT specialists will reach just 12 million by 2030. More information and recent data can be found on the DESI dashboard for the Digital Decade, the Report on the state of the Digital Decade 2024 and its accompanying Commission Staff Working Document Digital Decade in 2024: Implementation and perspective.