Digital skills initiatives

Initiatives

The Commission offers a wide range of digital skills initiatives. These all work towards meeting the Digital Decade targets of ensuring 80% of adults have basic digital skills and reaching 20 million employed ICT specialists, with a gender balance, by 2030.

The Commission is keeping track of progress towards these targets in its annual State of the Digital Decade reports. The State of the Digital Decade report 2023 was published on 27 of September 2023 and was complemented by a Staff Working Document. The document outlines Digital Decade cardinal points in four areas, including digital skills.

The first chapter of this document takes stock of the EU’s progress towards achieving the digital skills targets as set out in the Digital Decade Policy Programme 2030. It also describes in detail recent actions and initiatives taken both at Member State and EU level in the area of digital skills.

These initiatives support stakeholders in their work to improve the level of digital skills in Europe.

They include:

• The European Skills Agenda, which is helping individuals and businesses develop their skill
• The Digital Education Action Plan, a renewed policy initiative for inclusive, accessible digital education in Europe
• A proposal for a Council Recommendation on improving the provision of digital skills in education and training
• The European year of Skills: helps people get the right skills for quality jobs and supports companies in addressing skill shortages in Europe.
• The European Digital Skills and Jobs Platform, which provides information, resources and opportunities on digital skills and jobs
• The Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition, which brings together Member States, companies and organisations to tackle the digital skills gap
• National coalitions for digital skills and jobs, working to improve digital skills at national, regional and local levels
• EU Code Week a grassroots initiative that brings coding and digital literacy to everybody in a fun and engaging way.
• Data Space for Skills, a preparatory action for the future deployment of the European Data Space for Skills that will bring benefits to organisations and individuals.
• The Cybersecurity Skills Academy which aims to increase the number of professionals trained in cybersecurity and ensuring a more coordinated approach to closing the growing cyber talent gap.
• The European Digital Skills Awards 2023, which aims to give visibility to and reward regional, national and European projects and initiatives that are helping to bridge the digital gap in Europe.

There are many other policy areas that feed into the Commission’s work on digital skills. For example:

• 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.

Funding

Significant investments are needed to tackle the digital skills gap. The instruments put in place at EU level for the 2021-2027 budget provide major opportunities for Member States to support the sustainable development of digital skills.

Funding opportunities include:

• The Recovery and Resilience Facility: above 18% of its funds (i.e., EUR 23 billion) will be spent on investments in boosting digital skills at all levels.
• The Digital Europe Programme: promoting digital skills is a core element of this new funding, the budget for the first three years of the programme, 2021 to 2023, amounts to €224 million.
• Erasmus +: the EU's programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe. It supports the development of digital skills among other, through the initiative on Centres of Vocational Excellence with €400 million in the period 2021-2027.
• The European Social Fund Plus: a fund to support EU Member States in reforming national education and training systems to support key skills. More than €2 billion will be dedicated towards strengthening digital skills through the ESF+ in the period 2021-2027.
• The European Globalisation Adjustment Fund for Displaced Workers (EGF): 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.