40 per cent of EU citizens still lack basic digital skills

Brussels – Europe is seeking to accelerate the adoption of advanced technologies, but is struggling to bridge the skills gap among its citizens. The 2026 edition of the report “Digitalisation in Europe“, published today (23 April) by Eurostat, the EU Statistical Office, provides a clear snapshot of the progress made and the challenges that remain. 

The EU’s goal is to ensure that at least 80 per cent of the European population has basic digital skills by 2030, but data from 2025 shows that 40 per cent of EU citizens still lack these basic digital skills, even though 93 per cent of the population uses the internet at least once a week. Basic skills are the ability to perform at least one of the following activities: searching for information online, sending emails, creating digital content, protecting one’s personal data, or installing software. Countries such as the Netherlands (84 per cent), Ireland (83 per cent), Denmark and Finland (both at 81 per cent) lead the rankings, but there is still a long way to go to reach the EU target. 

In the professional sector, ICT specialists—those who develop, manage and maintain IT systems, networks and business software—now account for 5 per cent of the total workforce in the EU, with over 10 million professionals. Although this figure has risen by 1.5 percentage points since 2015, Europe aims to reach 20 million experts by the end of the decade. However, a significant gender imbalance remains: 81 per cent of specialists are men, compared with a mere 19 per cent of women, with the lowest figures in the Czech Republic (13 per cent) and the highest in Romania (28 per cent). 

The private sector is showing signs of strong dynamism. The level of digital intensity is a metric used to monitor the integration of digital technologies within businesses and is measured using the Digital Intensity Index (DII): Europe’s benchmark for assessing how technologically advanced businesses are. This index monitors the adoption of 12 different technologies, such as artificial intelligence or online sales, assigning a score that defines four intensity thresholds: very low (0–3 technologies), low (4–6), high (7–9) and very high (10–12). A business reaches the so-called “baseline level” when it uses at least four of these tools, a milestone that currently applies to 72 per cent of businesses in the EU. In 2025, 72 per cent of all EU businesses had reached a baseline level of digital intensity: the share for SMEs was 71 per cent, around 20 percentage points below the 2030 target, while for large enterprises it stood at 96 per cent. Large enterprises had a higher share of very high (43 per cent) and high (40 per cent) digital intensity, compared with just 9 per cent of SMEs with a very high level and 27 per cent with a high level. Most SMEs recorded low (35 per cent) or very low (29 per cent) levels of digital intensity. 

Cloud computing plays a central role: by 2025, 53 per cent of European businesses had used IT resources provided by third parties rather than maintaining their own hardware and software infrastructure. It is interesting to note that Italy ranks among the top European countries, with 75.6 per cent of companies using third parties for IT services, surpassed only by Finland (79.2 per cent). 

At the same time, interest in artificial intelligence is growing: by 2025, almost 20 per cent of EU businesses will be using AI technologies, an increase of 6 per cent compared to 2024. Denmark leads the way in this sector, with 42 per cent of businesses involved; it is followed by Finland (38 per cent), Sweden and Belgium (35 per cent). 

Digitalisation affects not only the market, but also the relationship between the state and its citizens (e-government). By 2030, all key public services must be available online. In 2025, 47 per cent of EU citizens who had used the internet in the previous 12 months had used it to obtain information from public authority websites, for example, on services, benefits, rights, laws and opening hours. This proportion varies considerably across EU countries: in 11 EU Member States, over 50 per cent of people used such websites to obtain information, with Finland (73 per cent), Denmark (72 per cent) and Sweden (70 per cent) leading the way. Unsurprisingly, the highest proportion was recorded among people aged 25 to 64 (50 per cent), followed by those aged 16 to 24 (41 per cent) and 65 to 74 (37 per cent).

In Italy, the path towards digital transformation is progressing at different speeds between the manufacturing sector and the general public. In Italy, the proportion of ICT specialists among the total workforce remains among the lowest in the EU (10.1 per cent), ahead only of Poland (9.6 per cent), Lithuania (7.7 per cent), and Bulgaria (4.8 per cent). As regards e-government, Italy is around ten percentage points below the EU average: 25.8 per cent of young Italians aged between 16 and 24 have used the internet to access public authority websites (compared to the European average of 41.4 per cent), 38.1 per cent of those aged 25 to 64 (49.5 per cent in the EU) and 28.8 per cent of those aged 65 to 74 (compared to 37.2 per cent of European “seniors”).

Girls excel at digital content, but trail in coding

Eurostat data also highlight that while young European women excel in creating digital content, there is a need to encourage their greater involvement in programming. In 2025, girls aged 16–19 demonstrated proficiency in digital content creation higher than the average for the general population (aged 16–74). Specifically, the majority of young women surveyed stated that they could manage files in the cloud or across devices (79.2 per cent), use word-processing software (75.2 per cent), and create complex multimedia files that integrate text, images, and animations (71.4 per cent). However, the proportion of girls who code is almost half that of boys: 10 per cent compared to 19.8 per cent. This difference is present in almost all EU countries, with the largest figures in Portugal (26.6 percentage points), Belgium (17.9 pp), and Slovakia (17.4 pp). The only notable exception is Cyprus, where girls outnumber boys in coding by 4.3 percentage points. Conversely, the smallest gaps are found in Bulgaria (0.2 pp), Latvia (1.6 pp), and Romania (2.4 pp).