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Initiatives
To meet its goal of ensuring 70% of adults have basic digital skills and to support stakeholders in improving the level of digital skills in Europe, the Commission offers a wide range of initiatives including:
- the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition
- national coalitions for digital skills and jobs
- The European Digital Skills and Jobs Platform
- EU Code Week
- the European Skills Agenda
- the digital education action plan
There are many other policy areas that also feed in to the Commission’s work on digital skills. For example, the European strategy for data, the European industrial and small and medium-sized enterprise strategies, Digital Innovation Hubs, and the coordinated plan on artificial intelligence.
Funding
Significant investments are needed to tackle the digital skills gap. The instruments put in place at EU level for the budget 2021-2027 provide major opportunities for Member States to support the sustainable development of digital skills. They include:
- The Recovery and Resilience Facility: 20% of its funds must be spent on the digital transition of Member States, including on digital skills.
- The Digital Europe Programme: promoting digital skills is a core element of this new funding, which has a budget of around €200 million for 2021 and 2022.
- The European Social Fund Plus: a fund to support EU Member States in reforming national education and training systems to support key skills
- The European Global Adjustment Fund: supports trainings in digital skills to help laid-off workers find another job or set up their own business.
- Horizon Europe: finances grants for master, PhD and post-graduate research activities in all fields including digital through Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions as well as the European Institute of Innovation & Technology.
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Big Picture
The European Commission is determined to tackle the digital skills gap and promote projects and strategies to improve the level of digital skills in Europe.
Dig deeper
The Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition tackles the digital skills gap by bringing together Member States, companies and organisations.
All organisations, businesses and government bodies are encouraged to make a concrete commitment to carry out actions to reduce the digital skills gap in Europe.
The Governing Board of the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition provides leadership and advice to improve the functioning and the impact of the coalition.
National coalitions for digital skills and jobs work to improve digital skills at national, regional and local levels.
See Also
The European Commission is aiming to modernise education and training by funding research and innovation and promoting digital technologies used for learning.